The Horse in Premodern European Culture PDF
Preview The Horse in Premodern European Culture
TheHorseinPremodernEuropeanCulture Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture LXX The Horse in Premodern European Culture Edited by Anastasija Ropa and Timothy Dawson ISBN978-1-5015-1818-8 e-ISBN(PDF)978-1-5015-1378-7 e-ISBN(EPUB)978-1-5015-1401-2 LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2019950212 BibliographicinformationpublishedbytheDeutscheNationalbibliothek TheDeutscheNationalbibliothekliststhispublicationintheDeutscheNationalbibliografie; detailedbibliographicdataareavailableontheInternetathttp://dnb.dnb.de. ©2019WalterdeGruyterGmbH,Berlin/Boston CoverImage:©BritishLibrary,Royal14EIIf.194,JeandeCourcyandtheVirtues Typesetting:IntegraSoftwareServicesPvt.Ltd. Printingandbinding:CPIbooksGmbH,Leck www.degruyter.com Contents AnastasijaRopa Introduction 1 Part I:Working Horsesand Their Equipment FabienneMeiers 1 EquestrianCities:TheUseofRidingHorsesandCharacteristicsof HorseHusbandryinLateMedievalUrbanAgglomerations 13 FlorianaBardoneschi 2 WorkingHorsesintheNorthernEuropeanCountrysidebetweenthe ThirteenthandSixteenthCenturies:WhatAdvantageforaFarm? 27 TimothyDawson 3 BaggageAnimals–TheNeglectedEquines.AnIntroductorySurvey ofTheirVarieties,Uses,andEquipping 45 GailBrownrigg 4 MedievalHorseHarness–TheEvidenceoftheImages 55 Part II:Warhorses JürgGassmann 5 MountedCombatinTransition:TheTransformationoftheEleventh Century 71 JackGassmann 6 TheUseoftheCrossbowinMedievalCavalry 87 Part III:PerformingHorses KarenCampbell 7 ReadingHorsesandWritingChivalry 107 JenniferJobst 8 HowtoRidebeforeaPrince:TheRiseofRidingasaPerformance Art 123 VI Contents Part IV: CaringforHorses ElinaH.Cotterill 9 HowtoMakeaWhiteMarkonaBlackHorse:MiddleEnglish HippiatricMedicine,CommonDiseases,andTheirRemedies 147 KatrinBoniface 10 BreadforMyHorses 161 Part V: Material CulturesofRiding JohnClark 11 CurbingHorsepower:TheArchaeologyofCurbBitsinMedieval England–andElsewhere 177 MarinaViallon 12 AnAutopsyofRenaissanceEquestrianism:TheMaterials,Making, andUseofaca.1535WarSaddlefromtheMuséedesBeaux-Artsof Rennes 193 Part VI: TheRepresented Horse: Law,Administration, and Literature EdgarsRops 13 TheHorseinWelshandAnglo-SaxonLaw 205 AnastasijaRopa 14 ThePriceandValueoftheWarhorseinLateMedievalEngland 219 MiriamBibby 15 The(Galloway)HorseandHisBoy:LeRomanDesAventuresDe Fregusand“TheBestBreedintheNorth”? 235 IndexofPersonalName 253 IndexofPlace 255 GeneralIndex 257 Anastasija Ropa Introduction Inthepremodernworldandrightuptothetwentiethcentury,horseswereacon- spicuouspresenceinpeople’sdailylives,whetherinruralorurbanenvironments. Therewasnotasinglememberofacommunitywhoselifewasnot,insomeway, related to or dependent on the presence of horses and the work they did. This is especiallytrueofthemedievalperiod:evenbeforehorseswereusedinagriculture, peasantswereawareoftheneedtosupplyfoodfortheirlord’shorses.Forpeople intowns,horseswerethemeansofquicktransport.Innon-secularsettings,there isevidencethatmanylargermonasterieswerebreedinghorses.Horsesarepresent in a variety of sources: in courtly literature, court records, wills, and charters, in prayers and charms, on stained glass, paintings, sculpture, tapestries, and deco- ratedhouseholdobjects,nottomentionthewealthofarchaeologicalevidenceen- compassing horse equipment, the remains of actual horses, as well as such structuresasstablesandhippodromes. Over the past decades, the number of studies in horse history has steadily increased, reflecting a growing interest in animal studies. Innovative studies of medievalequestrianhistoryhavebeenundertakeninnumerousdisciplines,most notablyliterature,militaryhistory,andarchaeology.However,therearefewup- to-date collections bringing together studies in horse history in premodern Europe conducted by scholars working in different disciplines. One of such col- lections,“...thatIwishedmyselfahorse,”isdominatedbystudiesinliterature and linguistics, and, moreover,has only onearticle, on horse racing inIreland, for the period before Shakespeare.1 This collection demonstrates the extent to which our culture, especially in the domains of language, literature, visual and performative arts, is informed by the centuries of interaction between humans andhorses.Thereareotherimportantcollectionsonthehorseintheancientand medieval worlds, which, however, require from readers mastery of French and Italian,withmanyofthearticlesusingliteratureastheirprincipalsource.2 InEnglishscholarship,therehavebeenseveralworksthatpresentacompre- hensive,balancedpictureofthemedievalhorse.AnnHylandhasauthoredthree monographsdevotedtodifferenthistoricalperiods,whichincludesomematerial not only on the elite horses used by the nobility, but also on the “non-elite” horses.3 Deservedly praised for their wide scope of information and Hyland’s expertise in horsemanship, these studies have also been criticized on methodo- logicalgrounds,notablyforHyland’suseofprimaryandsecondarysources.4 Anotherwell-knownstudyofthemedievalhorseisathoroughlyresearched volumeonmedievalhorseequipment,editedbyJohnClark,althoughitisalso https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513787-001 2 AnastasijaRopa inneedofupdating,particularlyinthesectiononcurbbits.5Thestudyisbased on the material from London, meaning that items that were not discovered in archaeological excavations in London, such as saddles, which would have been disassembled for material, or items that were discovered in small num- bers, such as curb bits, usually associated with aristocratic riders, were not fully discussed in the volume. In the article contributed to the present collec- tion, John Clark uses material from archaeological excavations elsewhere in Britaintodiscussthedevelopmentofthecurbbitinthemedievalperiod. Militaryhistoryisonefieldwhereinterestinthehorseaspartofthewarma- chineryemergedearlyon.Oneofthefirsthistorianstohighlighttheimportance ofthehorseinmedievalsocietywasR.H.C.Davis,whosestudyofthewarhorse compares the animal to a tank. Davis’s use of archival documents is highly in- structiveandhasinformedtheworkofmanyscholarsresearchingthehorsefrom theperspectiveofmilitaryhistoryandbeyond,suchasAnnHylandandAndrew Ayton.6 Meanwhile, the study of administrative documents undertaken by mili- tary historians Davis and Ayton, who work on the high and late medieval peri- ods, is less productive for research on the early medieval warhorse, as few documentssurvivefromthisperiod.Here,differentsourcescanbeengaged:Jürg Gassman, in his study of the early medieval warhorse, included in the present collection,buildsontheevidenceofarchaeologyandchronicle.Naturally,some ofDavis’sconclusionshavebeencriticizedinviewoflaterfindingsanddevelop- ment in historical theory. Thus, Davis’s comparison of the horse to a powerful warmachineisusefulasananalogybecauseitmakestheimportantroleofthe horseinwarunderstandableinourtechnologicallyadvancedsociety. Unfortunately,this comparison also gives the impression that the warhorse or“great”horsewasagiantandthatridingawarhorsewaslikemanipulatinga machine, which has no will of its own. Bothof these premiseshave since been severely criticized. The long-standing notion that warhorses were giant in size, similartoShiresorArdennes,stilllingersinpopularimagination,yet itwasre- futedbyup-to-dateresearch.CriticizingBachrach’scalculationsoftheheightof themedievalwarhorse,MatthewBennettconcludesthatthedestrierwasofmod- erateproportions.Archaeologicalfindssuggestthatintheearlyandhighmedie- val periods horseswere rathersmall, though bynomeanspony-sized, and that horses tend to increase in size towards the end of the Middle Ages, yet remain smaller than the horses performing in dressage and show-jumping sports.7 However,AdelineDumont,inherstudyofthetrainingofahorseforwar,findsit necessarytorefutethepopularmyththat“lesdestriersmédiévauxsontdestrès grandsettrèsgroschevauxdetrait”(medievalwarhorseswereverybigandvery largeharnesshorses).8 Introduction 3 Therecent“animalturn”inthehumanitiesemphasizesthecloseinterspecies engagement.Thecontributionofawarhorseincombatsituationsthuscannotbe equated to the contribution of a well-tuned machine: a trained horse can add a personalnote to a combat situation, notonly accommodating itself tothe will of the rider, but also making some moves suggested by its training and prior experience. This conclusion is maintained in Dumont’s practical study of a war- horse’s behavior, where she observes that “Les chevaux aprennent rapidement à avoir un certain degré d’autonomie et d’engagement” (Horses learn quickly to haveacertainextentofautonomyandengagement).9Moreover,whilethereislit- tleevidenceofaknight’spersonalengagementwithhiswarhorse,itisnaturalthat a bond of trust and understanding would be formed between a knight and his long-timebattlecompanion,andthataridercouldalsofeeldislikeforahorsedue to some features in its character. Indeed, while a warhorse was in no way a pet andcouldnotexcitethesamesentimentalaffectioninitsownerasalapdog,10it couldinspirefeelingsofaverydifferentnature,includingtrustandrespectgained asaresultoflivingthroughdangerousexperiencestogether. Thewarhorsewasalsoinstrumentalinbuildingtheknight’spublicpersona, anaspectthathasbeenstudiedbybothSusanCraneandJeffreyJ.Cohen.Susan Crane notes the compound nature of the medieval knight, theorizing about the knightandthewarhorseasan“assemblage.”11Withouteithercomponent,chiv- alrywouldloseitsmeaning:aknightwouldonlybeanarmedman,adestrier– nothing more than a horse. Crane draws her inspiration from Jeffrey J. Cohen’s influentialmonographMedievalIdentityMachines,wherehenotesthat,although “noble households ordinarily possessed numerous types of horses: hunters, chargers,palfreys,andavarietyofworkhorses,”noneofthem“gainedthenumi- nousauraofthearistocraticwarhorse(destrier,magnusequus,grantchival),the knight’sbelovedcompanionandthesinequanonofchivalricidentity.”12Cohen emphasizestheposthumanfactorofchivalry,anotionembracedbyanumberof scholars studying chivalric culture, and, in particular, the relation between the knight and the horse. However, Crane, while acknowledging Cohen’s argument of chivalric “dispersal of identity through arms and animals,” argues that dis- persalneednotcompromiseidentity;accordingtoCrane,“Postmodernversions oftheselfembeddedinmaterialityandopentointegrationwithotherspeciesof being, both organic and mechanical, would look more familiar to a medieval knightthanthefree-floating,autonomousselfoftheEnlightenment.”13 Cohen’suseoftheterm“identitymachine”maybemisleadinginimplyinga disengaged attitude towards horseson the part of the rider, unless thisissue is approachedfromtheposthumanistperspective.Inthiscase,thedividebetween human and non-human being becomes irrelevant, so that the knight’s involve- mentwithhishorseavoidsthesentimentalismofthepet-ownerrelationandthe
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