scholarly journals Combat Training for Horse and Rider in the Early Middle Ages

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jürg Gassmann
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Combat Training ◽  
Current State ◽  
Euro Pean ◽  
Literature Source ◽  
And Training

Abstract The cavalry horse, tactics and training in Western Europe – the Euro-pean provinces of the Roman Empire of the West and the Frankish Empire – du-ring the Early Middle Ages (c. 500-1000) are still subject to many myths in both popular media and academic literature. Source material is admittedly thin, yet it is specific enough to allow us to correct many of these misconceptions and outright errors. The article initially summarises the current state of knowledge on the war horse of the period, by reference to the archaeological record. It then reviews the cavalry’s battlefield tactics, derives the skill level required to execute the manoeuvres described in the sources, and analyses where and how this training could have been provided. The information gleaned provides an insight into the skills and expertise neces-sary to achieve the requisite sophisticated level of horsemanship. We shall argue that these imply a considerable investment in organisational infrastructure, per-sonnel and institutional memory, which has so far not received much academic attention, and has wider implications for our view of the era.

Coinage and the Tributary Mode of Production

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduardo Manzano Moreno
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Role ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The Social ◽  
Simple Question ◽  
Mode Of Production

This chapter addresses a very simple question: is it possible to frame coinage in the Early Middle Ages? The answer will be certainly yes, but will also acknowledge that we lack considerable amounts of relevant data potentially available through state-of-the-art methodologies. One problem is, though, that many times we do not really know the relevant questions we can pose on coins; another is that we still have not figured out the social role of coinage in the aftermath of the Roman Empire. This chapter shows a number of things that could only be known thanks to the analysis of coins. And as its title suggests it will also include some reflections on greed and generosity.

The Cult of Relics in the Letters and ‘Dialogues’ of Pope Gregory the Great: A Lexicographical Study

Traditio ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. McCulloh
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Human Remains ◽  
The West ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Gregory The Great

Late antiquity and the early Middle Ages witnessed a change in the Christian attitude toward the remains of the saints. Holy bodies came to be treated less and less as normal corpses, worthy of special veneration but still subject to many of the laws and customs which had regulated the treatment of human remains in pagan Antiquity. They came rather to be viewed as cult objects which could be moved or even divided up according to the demands of religion with little regard for earlier prohibitions of these practices. This change occurred relatively early in the Greek, eastern portion of the Roman Empire. In the mid-fourth century the Caesar Gallus translated a saint's body from one tomb to another, and less than two centuries later Justinian asked Pope Hormisdas for portions of the bodies of the apostles. Despite some outstanding exceptions such as the translations performed by St. Ambrose, the Christians of the West were more conservative in these matters. Nevertheless, by the ninth century at the very latest, western Christians had followed the lead of the eastern church in both translating and dismembering holy bodies.

scholarly journals From the Light and into the Dark: the Transformation to the Early Middle Ages

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arrush Choudhary
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Rural Life ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Italian Peninsula ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
Decentralized Governance ◽  
The City ◽  
The Middle Ages

From a historic perspective, the period of Roman rule and the following Middle Ages are polar opposites. For most, the city of Rome and the Western Roman Empire represent a time of advancement for the Mediterranean world while the Middle Ages are viewed as a regression of sorts for Europe. The reasons explaining the underlying cause of this transition from the Western Roman Empire to the Middle Ages are numerous but this paper will specifically focus on the practices started by the Romans themselves and how they contributed to the rise of the Early Middle Ages on the Italian Peninsula. More specifically, economic turmoil and urbanization following the 3rd century crisis in the city of Rome laid the groundwork for social, legislative, and political changes that thread the path to the fundamental characteristics of the Middle Ages. Changing views of the city and the countryside, the construction of latifundia and villas, and the passing of legislation that restricted the rights of laborers, in addition to other transformations in late Rome, all contributed to the decentralized governance, rural life, and serfdom that are characteristic of the Middle Ages. Ultimately, the goal of this paper is to illustrate that despite the major differences that exist between the Roman period and the Middle Ages, the practices of the late Western Roman Empire were often directly carried over into the Middle Ages and, as a result, for one to truly understand the origins of the Middle Ages, it is essential to comprehend the traditions started by the late Romans.

The Trojan War in the Middle Ages

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Arner
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
The Middle Ages

In the Middle Ages, the Fall of Troy functioned as the secular parallel to the Fall of Man. Just as sacred history begins with the Creation, the Fall, and then Adam and Eve being forced to leave Eden, secular history begins with the construction of Troy and the dispersal of Trojan survivors after the city is destroyed by the Greeks. Burgeoning nations throughout western Europe, including England, France, and various Italian territories, claimed Trojan origin, just as the Roman Empire had identified the Trojan Aeneas as its founder. The story of Rome’s Trojan origin was told in Virgil’s Aeneid, the most well-known and influential secular text of the Middle Ages, and medieval chroniclers adapted Virgil’s narrative to tell of how Aeneas’s brethren or descendants founded their own civilizations that could lay claim to Rome’s political heritage and establish new empires (this concept of imperial authority being transferred from one nation to another is known the translatio imperii). Medieval monarchs justified their rule by adopting genealogies that traced their lineage back to the kings and heroes of Troy. The Trojan legend was rehearsed in historical chronicles and adapted into vernacular poetry, and these texts circulated widely throughout the Middle Ages and well into the early modern era. While modern readers identify Homer as the primary source for Trojan material, he was branded a “liar” by medieval writers who rejected his representation of the gods and his association with the Greeks. “Eyewitness” accounts by Dares the Phyrgian and Dictys of Crete were regarded as authentic narratives of how Troy was first built, its destruction by Jason and Hercules after their quest for the golden fleece, its rebuilding by King Priam, the abduction of Helen by Paris, and its final destruction by the Greek army led by Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Ulysses. For a Christian audience, Homer’s false gods could not have played any role. Instead, the story of Troy is one of political debate, military strategy, and the operation of Fortune in the sphere of human action. The story of Troy’s fall and the romantic subplots invented by medieval writers functioned as moral exempla from which readers could learn political, military, and personal virtues. The narratives and themes that constitute the Trojan Legend play a critical role in the development of medieval historiography and literature, though the boundaries between these genres were often blurred.

The Mission to Constantinople in 968 and Liudprand of Cremona

Traditio ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 55-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon N. Sutherland
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Detailed Record ◽  
East West

Of the documents that concern the relationship between Byzantium and Western Europe in the early Middle Ages, none is more famous or more frequently read than Relatio de Legatione Constantinopolitana, Liudprand of Cremona's description of his mission to Constantinople in 968 for Otto I. Much has been learned from his vivid if acid narrative about the Byzantine court of Nicephorus II Phocas and about East-West relations in the tenth century. Over the last forty years research has reached beneath the vivid prose in search of the true significance of that mission. But since Liudprand's is the only first-hand, detailed record of an embassy to Constantinople of that era, some scholars have given it more contemporary importance than it actually had, and, by extension, they have turned Liudprand's thoughts into subtle expressions of official Western policy. The danger in these inquiries has been to divorce the mind and moods of the creator from his creation and bestow on Relatio undeserved exaltation. The problem is to keep the document in its perspective while draining every sentence of its implications.

Educated Wandering Jews, 800–1250

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maristella Botticini ◽  
Zvi Eckstein
Keyword(s):  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Jewish Diaspora ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Business Opportunities ◽  
Vast Territory

This chapter shows that once the Jews became literate, urban, and engaged in skilled occupations, they began migrating within the vast territory under Muslim rule—stretching from the Iberian Peninsula to India during the eighth through the twelfth centuries, and from the Byzantine Empire to western Europe via Italy and within western Europe in the ninth through the thirteenth centuries. In early medieval Europe, the revival of trade concomitant with the Commercial Revolution and the growth of an urban and commercial economy paralleled the vast urbanization and the growth of trade that had occurred in the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates four to five centuries earlier. The Jewish diaspora during the early Middle Ages was mainly the outcome of literate Jewish craftsmen, shopkeepers, traders, scholars, teachers, physicians, and moneylenders migrating in search of business opportunities to reap returns on their investment in literacy and education.

Charlemagne, the Carolingian Empire, and Its Successors

2021 ◽  
pp. 468-498
Author(s):  
Rosamond McKitterick
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Western World ◽  
Administrative System ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
Carolingian Empire ◽  
Political Units

Both the Christian empire of Charlemagne and the subsequently hugely influential imperial ideology of the early Middle Ages were rooted in the Roman past. This chapter addresses the reality of the early medieval empire and the ways in which it was represented by contemporaries for posterity. It examines the career of Pippin III, the first king of the Carolingian dynasty, and the expansion of the Carolingian Empire under his illustrious son Charlemagne, by both design and chance, to embrace most of western Europe. This vast realm was governed by an elaborate and efficient political and administrative system in which both lay and ecclesiastical magnates played a crucial role. This system of governance was maintained even within the smaller political units of the later ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. The Latin Christian culture initially promoted by Charlemagne, moreover, is the most enduring legacy of the medieval empire to the Western world.

Economy and Society in an Earlier America

1987 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-319
Author(s):  
Stuart Bruchey
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
American History ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Social Variables ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Vertical Mobility

I suggest here that change in a number of social variables, including values, vertical mobility, political and social power, technology and law, appear to be associated with economic growth or decline and that the study of economic history would be enriched by investigations of the nature and timing of those linkages. Illustrative models of the linkages are drawn for the early Middle Ages in Western Europe and for the colonial and antebellum periods of American history.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document