Articles
Picti: from Roman name to internal identity
Nicholas Evans
Pages: 291-322
https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2022.2076723
Recent scholarship has become increasingly sceptical about the importance of Pictish identity in the first millennium A.D. It has been suggested that Picti was an external classical general label for people inhabiting northern Britain only adopted internally in the late seventh century. This article reviews the references to Picti in late antique and subsequent Insular sources from the late third century to A.D. 700. It proposes that the term was adopted in northern Britain by the end of the Roman period and maintained afterwards through the usage of Latin, due to imperial influence and conversion to Christianity. While not the only ethnic identity upheld in the region, the concept of Picti was used by the kings of Fortriu for their wider realm in the late seventh century because it was already known and significant.
Ethnographic writing in the kingdom of Jerusalem: in search of a neglected intellectual tradition
Jonathan Rubin
Pages: 323-346
https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2022.2072941
It has been argued in recent years that Western ethnographic curiosity and writing grew significantly during the late medieval period. Surprisingly, the Latin East has remained almost completely neglected within this scholarly context. The present paper aims to fill this lacuna by exploring a discourse within the kingdom of Jerusalem which focused on customs and ways of life of non-Latins and which was based on observation rather than hearsay and stereotypes. The paper traces the beginnings of this tradition and follows its development, shedding light on the figures and milieus involved as well as on its innovativeness and richness. It also explores the complex relations between this discourse and some of the earliest Latin works about the Mongols. The picture that emerges is of a society which did not lack in ethnographic curiosity, and where knowledge of other cultures was not always dominated by, or harnessed to, a polemical discourse.
How to make a warhorse: violence and behavioural control in late medieval hippiatric treatises
Sunny Harrison
Pages: 347-367
https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2022.2076725
Horses were vital to the military activities and social identities of the late medieval aristocracy. However, the process by which warhorses were broken and trained is poorly studied, in part because of a perceived lack of equestrian literature from Western Europe. This article uses the hippiatric tradition of horse care manuals as sources for training and behavioural control; analysing techniques that used pain and fear as well as magic and devotion to render a horse subservient. Medieval horsemanship reflected complex ideas of nobility, bellicosity and submission; using violence and bodily subjectification to turn a ‘wild' foal into an elite warhorse that was recognisable by its gentility and politesse as well as its fierceness and bravery. As well as adding to our knowledge of medieval military provisioning and culture, this paper also contributes to a more nuanced picture of the lived experiences of animals in the Middle Ages.
Guild formation and the artisanal labour market: the example of Castelló d'Empúries, 1260–1310
Elizabeth Comuzzi
Pages: 368-395
https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2022.2073462
This article examines artisanal employment agreements from the Catalan town of Castelló d'Empúries from 1260–1310, the period before and just after the formation of the first craft guild in that town. It addresses why craft guilds formed and what advantage guilds offered medieval artisans in contrast to pre-guild systems, with a focus on the market for artisanal training. The pre-guild artisanal labour market in late thirteenth-century Castelló was highly flexible, with a variety of terms and contract types under which craft training could be acquired. Artisans were free to make any agreement they found mutually satisfactory, but they were also at the mercy of the market. Trained artisans were not always the ones with higher resources and power compared to prospective learners. The cloth-finishers' guild of Castelló closely monitored the market for training in their craft, and standardised the terms and contract formats under which training was offered.
Heretical refugees and persecution of German Waldensians, 1393–1400
Eugene Smelyansky
Pages: 396-416
https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2022.2073463
Historians of heresy and inquisition in late medieval German-speaking central Europe have long discussed the mobility and initiative of prosecutors – episcopal or mendicant inquisitors – as one of the main factors behind the intensification of anti-heretical activity during the 1390s and the early years of the fifteenth century. However, the mobility of heretical refugees produced by these inquisitions also constituted an important factor that helped to perpetuate anti-heretical violence. This article examines late medieval refugees by looking at two case studies involving individuals who left their home towns during the period of intensified persecutions of German Waldensians in the 1390s. Their itineraries demonstrate that Waldensian followers knew of the heretical communities in other cities and reveal the effect the refugees had on their host communities. Waldensian refugees contributed to destabilising local communities or attracting inquisitorial attention, which stoked religious violence and caused further waves of displacement.
The Iberian ambition of a duke of Burgundy: Philip the Handsome and the royal treasury in the Crown of Castile (1502–6)
Federico Gambero Gálvez
Pages: 417-438
https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2022.2076724
Philip the Handsome, the first Habsburg king of Castile, ruled briefly, in tandem with his wife except for the final three months of his reign, from the death of Isabella I in November 1504 to his own demise in September 1506. The problems, but also the potential, of the dynastic union of Castile and the Burgundian Low Countries were clear from the time he took his oath as a prince in 1502. Castile's royal treasury, in a severe crisis from 1503, was to become, owing to its political importance and its role as a major source of revenue, a primary arena for these dynastic interactions.
