Medieval Times

Could you recommend a good medieval history book?

The Two Cities by Martin Barber was the main text book we had for the Medieval module I did at University.
I tried to read it a couple of years ago but I think i had a number of other books on the go at the same time so I didn't get very far. Would still really like to get through it though

Sorry that was Malcolm Barber not Martin

Thanks that looks interesting I will investigate.

xpost i don't think the plague killed 1/3 of humanity (more like 1/6 or 1/5); a bit more than 1/3 of european population, though, for sure.

i've always wondered how the plague managed to "skip" a chunk of europe near contemporary poland and ukraine.

Colder climate, lesser flea population? or just more landlocked?

very low population density would have inhibited transmission

there probably wasn't a lot to choose between being in mediaeval ukraine vs being dead

they probably had decent potato DUMPLINGS!?

why did ilx just capitalize and add a "!?" to that last word?

let me try that again... DUMPLINGS!

interesting.

potato?

have you never seen DUMPLINGS! amateurist

because https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DUMPLINGS!_%28film%29

lol wow it even breaks links

um okay it's a movie

this is sort of like pee-wee's word of the day

DUMPLINGS!

"there probably wasn't a lot to choose between being in mediaeval ukraine vs being dead"

I reckon that 1930-33 period of famine in Ukraine was probably very terrible, slow death in famine is always the worst. Better off dying from brutal violence than famine imo. And also there was lots of brutal violence, casual rape and murder going on in this period.

vlacil's films the valley of the bees, about some wandering teutonic knights, and especially his deranged blood feud story marketa lazarova are worth seeing if eastern european mediaeval grimness appeals

it isn't what I was waffling on about but they both look very good!

waffling on about DUMPLINGS!

Ha, that's fun!

marketa lazarova is so good

marketa lazarova is so good

It's fantastic! More immersive than the theme restaurants, too.

yeah i love a film that can provide such a total, enveloping vision of a world (and a moral order) that's so foreign to our own

another film like that is the much more obscure "fall of otrar," a kazakh film from the moment of the soviet union's collapse. it's about the mongol conquest.

i also like how vlacil uses all the stylistic and narrative innovations of the 1960s new waves to try to evoke the animist, superstitious worldview of the characters in the film. i guess i group it w/ "fall of otrar" and (as everyone says) "andrei rublev" b/c they all feel somehow both epic and oppressively claustrophic.

er, claustrophobic

I recently started reading The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000 by Chris Wickham. Seems like a good survey of the first half of the middle ages, by a writer up to date on Medieval scholarship.

also, this series of more academic books seems interesting:

http://www.palgrave.com/series/the-new-middle-ages/NMAG/

i've read the first few chapters of Inheritance of Rome, it was good stuff, cdn't remember the title so thanks

Hadn't heard of The Fall of Otrar before, if its anything like Rublev or Vlacil sign me up.

"there probably wasn't a lot to choose between being in mediaeval ukraine vs being dead"

I reckon that 1930-33 period of famine in Ukraine was probably very terrible, slow death in famine is always the worst. Better off dying from brutal violence than famine imo. And also there was lots of brutal violence, casual rape and murder going on in this period.

― xelab, Saturday, February 28, 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There is an account of the '33 famine in Grossmann's Forever Flowing too.

was reading fossier the axe and the oath a while back which is pretty eccentric but good at giving a picture of regular people getting married, laughing at blind ppl, their sense of time, their households, the constant looming fear of the plague etc.

Terry Jones of Monty Python fame has done some really interesting material revisioning Medieval material to something a lot more realistic. His Chaucer's Knight takes what was apparently a symbol of great chivalry for several centuries into the rather farcical figure the same character would have been viewed as in Chaucer's time.
He also did a BBC series of Medieval lives based around archetypal character types. Very worth looking at I thought. Really enjoyed watching it.
I think there have been several other BBC series by other people over the last 5 or 10 years that have re-envisioned what was [probably actually thought by somebody of the time rather than the received version which has been refracted heavily by historical perspective in the interim. Inside the Medieval; Mind from around 2010 comes to mind and i think I've seen a few others. Though matybe they have been more about the upper echelons of society for the most part. Histories of various Queens etc showing that women could hold power or at least heavily influence it.

Hadn't heard of The Fall of Otrar before, if its anything like Rublev or Vlacil sign me up.

it's just as good, honestly. i know martin scorsese has repped for it after seeing it at a festival in the early 90s. sadly it's almost completely impossible to see... a print circulated by seagull films a few years ago, but the only VHS i know looks atrocious and doesn't have subtitles. so you'll probably have to wait a while to see it.

Thanks for the rare earth books and movies recommendations on this thread good people.

i guess i group it w/ "fall of otrar" and (as everyone says) "andrei rublev" b/c they all feel somehow both epic and oppressively claustrophic.

I think that feeling of claustrophobia in the two I've seen (Rublev and Marketa) is more subject than style, since they take such different approaches to the latter. It's the ignorance and desperation closing in on the characters. I get the same feeling from The Passion of Joan of Arc.

And, yeah, thanks for the tip about Otrar. I'll be on the lookout.

well it's also the way the narratives seem to cycle between a few locations... like no matter how far the characters go, they seem to return again and again to the same environments.

A package of 3 books by/on Paracelsus arrived yesterday! I will probably hit this thread up again once I make some progress with "The Devil's Doctor".

Reading about Anabaptist, who sound like communist/anarchist medieval Christians. Communes and cult leaders. Peasant revolts. Crazy stuff!

Organized religion was more or less the mafia. The Indulgences thing is straight up Godfather. All the water was polluted by the medieval versions of corporations, so everyone drank beer or wine. Most revolts were suppressed through keeping the populace literally drunk, as well as over-taxed and mal-nourished. Companies in control of grain (which made up most of the diet, hunting/meat/protein being forbidden to the poor) did Wall Street-style speculation and market manipulation. A monolithic banking family known as The Fuggers controlled most of the markets, and even loaned money to people bribing their way into politics/church. The more thing's change...

so many groups of the medieval heretic movements sound great, i quite fancy becoming a cathar

you might be interested in this: the pursuit of the millennium ...been looking for a copy myself for a quite awhile, supposed to be very good.

Gordon Leff's Heresy in the Later Middle Ages also good - a bit drier but strong on structures + dynamics of heresy & spiritual reform

(never finished it though, must see to that. Took the tip from Helen DeWitt)

I don't really think of anabaptists as medieval fwiw - blurry period lines & everything, but they aren't really a distinct thing till the reformation.

Yes, The Pursuit of the Millennium has all manner of craziness in it, for instance the sect who didn't believe in wearing clothes... I think that was in Bohemia, which seems to have been quite the place back in the day. So many crazy Germans too.

Sorry to diverge from this thread-repurposing but I was just wondering about this post from the original thread:

lol buena park. all the other locations are in real places.

― dance cook (get bent), Sunday, 7 August 2011 05:36 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What's the deal with Buena Park?

if you like radical religious cults and sects World Turned Upside Down is required reading!

getting far from the middle ages, but I've been dipping into Richard Greaves's Deliver us from Evil, about the where the radical underground went after the Restoration. It's good, feels more coherent and more readable than Hill's Experience of Defeat.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Johnofgaunt.jpg

I am reading "1381: The Year of the Peasants' Revolt" and it is talking about the corrupt military industrial complex of 1378. Above is John of Gaunt, who was a rich and powerful warlord during the times of (thirteen-year-old) Richard II's reign. Gaunt was having difficulty raising money for his army due largely to the church and general public (both through taxes) not wanting to fund these destructive forces. One sticking point was that ships built for military use were co-opted by wealthy merchants for private use when not in war times. Parliament was held away from London due to riots and confrontations and was a sign of Gaunt's falling reputation. Then this happened (emphasis mine):

The failure of his most recent military expedition had not helped matters but it was the violation of the sanctuary at Westminster Abbey by his men which had provoked outrage in both Church and city. Gaunt had imprisoned two soldiers who had refused to surrender to him their hostage for a very valuable Aragonese ransom; in August 1378 they had escaped from the Tower and taken refuge in the abbey sanctuary, where they were pursued and one of them killed on the steps of the high altar during mass, together with a sacristan who had attempted to intervene on their behalf.

1381, pp. 121

Gaunt was not personally blamed for the incident but the guilty men were ex-communicated from the church. This further helped to sour the relationship between church and state/military. Several attempts at tax reform and underwhelming poll tax results led to the hiring of a doomed army for an expedition to Brittany. The realm could only afford half the desired army due to a lack of funds. The expedition was delayed in order to wait for the poll tax to be processed, then delayed again due to bad winds. The lingering and idle army reportedly pillaged and raped the local population, lead by Sir John Arundel, who sounds like the most violent and horrible pirate you could imagine. Their ensuing bad luck was seen as God's justice in action. Encountering harsh winter storms upon finally setting sail, not a single ship reached its destination.

Commanding a force with the purpose of bringing relief to the Duke of Brittany, Sir John was compelled to wait for stronger winds. During this wait he decided to take refuge in a nunnery, where his men "took no notice of the sanctity of the place and... violently assaulted and raped" those they found inside. Further to this Sir John "allowed his men to ransack the countryside as they liked and to impoverish the people". When the force eventually set out to sea, carrying with them goods stolen from a nearby church and under a pronouncement of excommunication from the wronged priests, the expedition was caught in a storm. Thomas Walsingham reports that during the panic of the storm, Sir John murdered those of his men who refused to make for shore for fear of being shipwrecked upon the rocks. Subsequently, after safely arriving on an island off the Irish coast, Sir John and his boat captain were swept back into the sea and drowned.

According to Thomas Walsingham's story, FitzAlan's men profaned a convent at or near Southampton, and abducted many of its occupants. The fleet was then pursued by a violent tempest, when the wretched nuns who had been carried off were thrown overboard to lighten the ships. The vessels were, however, wrecked on the Irish coast, near Scariff according to some authorities, but at Cape Clear Island according to others. Sir John Arundell, together with his esquires, and other men of high birth, were drowned, and twenty-five ships were lost with most of their crews. Froissart's account of the event differs essentially from Walsingham's, in the omission of the story of the desecration of the convent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_FitzAlan,_1st_Baron_Arundel

I bet there are some crazy restless ghosts around these areas. Haunted waters.

Just finished the book. Pretty incredible stuff.

The so-called Peasant's revolt wasn't a case of a bunch of illiterate dirt diggers attempting anarchy. It included many people that owned land, were skilled in trades, and knew how government worked. The revolt itself in the summer of 81 was heavily co-ordinated, with rebels tracking down crooked officials, court rolls, and legal documents, in order to obtain a somewhat "legitimate" change in the way things are done. They burned these documents in public ceremonies, imitating official practice, to drive that home. They also displayed the dismembered heads of their victims in public areas, again imitating official practice. Aside from burning legal documents they had new ones drawn up to guarantee their newly won freedoms.

The main goal seems to have been abolishing villeinage (common serfdom) itself, and crazy enough, they met with (14 year old) King Richard II at Mile End in person, and he gave his word that it would be done. The boy king also gave them official seals and banners, which they carried with them on their quest to root out traitors. The nobelmen and royal court later made him go back on his word, and there is some ambiguity as to whether he did so in the first place out of fear or because he genuinely wanted to help his people. There is evidence that he actually attempted to abolish villeinage again and was unable to, so who knows. During the revolt the rebel rallying cry emphasized allegiance to the king, and many of them thought they were acting with the king's blessings.

What led to the revolt was a number of factors. The Black Death had struck earlier in the century, killing off many landholders and leaving the survivors to consolidate resources. This worked out better for some (the church, noblemen, lords) than others (serfs, freemen), resulting in increased social stratification. There were a series of mis-managed wars that benefited not the commoners but the glory-seekers, war profiteers, mercenaries, The Realm, etc. Campaigns were mis-managed and taxes continued to be levied, at more and more unfair rates. A poll tax was enacted that was due from every person 14 or older. Tax collectors often abused their power and were targets of the rebels. It would be 600 years before another poll tax.

Interestingly we only know about the most famous rebels due to establishment propaganda written in order to defame them. Inspirational speeches from rebel martyrs at the gallows were invented by church officials in order to further the church's monopoly on spirituality. The rebellion was quickly suppressed and all gains granted by the king were revoked within months. The example of the rebels' religious heresy was used to justify hundreds of years of brutalization and oppression.

There are some amazing stories in here. One story has well-hated Chief Justice John Cavendish fleeing from rebels and coming upon a boat to make his escape when a woman named Katherine Gamen saw him coming and untied it, leaving him to the mercy of the mob. Another story has the corpses of rebels displayed hanging from a tree to serve as a warning to others. A good samaritan climbed the tree, cut them down, and gave them a proper burial. Official response was to force the townspeople to dig up the corpses and re-hang them. Insane.

It's basically Game of Thrones except it really happened.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51rhsGySQ9L._SX327_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

http://www.amazon.com/1381-Peasants-Revolt-Juliet-Barker/dp/0674368142/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1458350022

this is the book. highly recommended.

his brother sleep is even more annoying:

skeleton, england, 15th century pic.twitter.com/o9QJOQxayu

— weird medieval guys (@WeirdMedieval) July 2, 2022

I thought this was going to be about the chain theme restaurant, where they employees are currently unionizing!!! Have seen the slogan suggestion "Jousting for jobs!" at least once already. Here for it.

smirking death supports the medieval union

that 5th from bottom line looks like it reads "I shit you so glad"