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Normal service resumes this week. FINALLY got my dissertation finished. Next post I will probably be answering questions in reverse order. Thank you all for your patience.
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Apr 16, 2013 10:37
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I have some neato links for those who like manuscript illuminations: A large collection of pretty manuscript illuminations - http://demonagerie.tumblr.com More illuminations, now focusing on fashion - http://illumanu.tumblr.com A blog about marginalia (little "doodles" on the margins of manuscripts, often very silly) - http://www.gotmedieval.com/  
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Apr 16, 2013 17:18
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So I was playing through Assassin's Creed and it got me wondering; was there a culture of recreative fitness for staying in shape and not being a fat monstrosity? We've already discussed knights and their athletic feats but how about the rest? My base assumptions would be that peasants were too poor and hungry to ever become really fat but the rest of society I'm not sure about.
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Apr 16, 2013 17:21
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Peasants would be way too busy toiling to get fat. I imagine artisans in the towns probably didn't have a lot of cash to be spending on food in most cases. Plus the food you can get isn't loaded with half the crap we have in modern fast food. Of course, we know that when people really had money to spend, they often became absolutely, disgustingly fat. Henry VIII, I'm looking in your direction; that guy could probably shame the fattest reality TV stars we have.
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Apr 16, 2013 17:35
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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That's the class I'm most curious about too; the people who were rich enough to afford fatness. So basically the nobility and the very rich merchants. We established earlier that teasing knights for being fat was a thing, but was that 'professional teasing' or 'personal teasing'? Did being fat have the bad connotation that it has today? I know some people claim that fatter was better, but that's obviously nonsense or it would have leaked through in documentation/propaganda and art.
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Apr 16, 2013 18:35
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Namarrgon posted:I know some people claim that fatter was better, but that's obviously nonsense or it would have leaked through in documentation/propaganda and art. Sorry, but you are mistaken. In many societies where some of the people suffer from genuine starvation and or malnutrition, having enough food security to be overweight is socially desirable. In India to this day, height and girth are both generally associated with familial wealth, the idea that your parents were able to keep you well feed consistently for all these years, much like how teeth in the US are a huge class signifier. Also being a bit over weight is indeed medically healthier than being below or even precisely at your target weight.
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Apr 16, 2013 19:20
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NEED TOILET PAPER posted:I imagine this isn't a common topic for extensive study, but what was medieval footwear like? I know pointed shoes were a Thing, but apart from that I'm totally in the dark. I'm especially interested in the shoes worn by armored knights and such, since I imagine their feet would have to be well-protected while still being light enough that they won't hamper movement on the battlefield. Actual armored knights would actually wear armored coverings on their feet, called sabatons. They are made from articulated plates and designed to permit the foot to bend and move while still covering from toe to heel:  I am not any sort of expert on this, but one good way to get an idea is to find contemporary artworks and see what is depicted there; you can usually find some sort of representation for a period, if only of nobility or battles (which works for seeing what people might fight in). Sometimes it's really weird, like Landschneckts who apparently wore brightly colored tights and little slippers into battle.
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Apr 16, 2013 19:31
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Arnold of Soissons posted:Sorry, but you are mistaken. In many societies where some of the people suffer from genuine starvation and or malnutrition, having enough food security to be overweight is socially desirable. In India to this day, height and girth are both generally associated with familial wealth, the idea that your parents were able to keep you well feed consistently for all these years, much like how teeth in the US are a huge class signifier. Also being a bit over weight is indeed medically healthier than being below or even precisely at your target weight. Yet we don't see poems about how fat rulers were. We see poems about how virtuous (and temperance being the virtue opposite of gluttony) they are. The very fact that gluttony exists as a sin and monks fasted and stuff means they must certainly have been aware of it.
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Apr 16, 2013 21:09
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Namarrgon posted:Yet we don't see poems about how fat rulers were. We see poems about how virtuous (and temperance being the virtue opposite of gluttony) they are. The very fact that gluttony exists as a sin and monks fasted and stuff means they must certainly have been aware of it. Depending on the time and place, some monk's fasting diet included three meals with fish in at least one of them and possibly waterfowl. Gluttony as a sin was a way to encourage the poor to be content with their lot and also a theoretical ideal. There were huge feasts allowed to celebrate the days of saints, and a saint assigned to every day. Most people, even the very rich, at moderate fare, compared to those huge medieval banquet scenes you see with piles of suckling everything, but those feats did happen, too. And those rich people weren't eating lightly the rest of the year, just not banquets every day.
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Apr 16, 2013 21:14
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Temperance was generally the virtue opposite drunkenness, fyi. When size was seen as positive, it wasn't in terms you would think of today, like "BBW" or "sexy back rolls" or whatever. But you do absolutely see chubby women in art, praise for plumpness, disparagement of scrawny or wizened figures, etc. This happens on and off throughout history -- our preference today isn't the discovery of One True Rightness, just another fad. Henry VIII was definitely not bigger-than-reality-show, fused-to-the-couch fat. He was always a big, athletic man, and kept eating like one even after his injuries and age forbade him from exercising the same way. Think retired football player (but smaller). There was definitely physical recreation for the upper classes -- jousting, horseback riding, tennis -- but it was for fun, or to hone fighting skills for men. You wouldn't see the average noblewoman waking up thinking "I must get in my three hours of tennis today so I don't turn into a fatty." Remember we're also talking about hundreds of years and plenty of countries, so obviously norms are going to differ within this period, too. Rubens vs. Botticelli (but note even Botticelli's bellies).
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Apr 16, 2013 22:01
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i like nice words
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Anne Whateley posted:Henry VIII was definitely not bigger-than-reality-show, fused-to-the-couch fat. He was always a big, athletic man, and kept eating like one even after his injuries and age forbade him from exercising the same way. Think retired football player (but smaller). Well, not Henry VIII in his prime, certainly. But I've read Henry VIII near the end was horrifyingly gross. Edit: although upon closer inspection it appears this was mostly due to an unfortunate wound rather than just completely letting himself go. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 22:22 on Apr 16, 2013 |
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Apr 16, 2013 22:19
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First of all, I might have missed a few questions. Feel free to post your question again if I have not answered it.Amyclas posted:How did a warrior fight effectively with teardrop shaped shields? Teardrop shaped shields, or kite shields, were quite easy to use effectively. On foot, the idea was that the tail would cover your legs. Particularly desirable in a shield wall. On horse, it would cover your leg on the left side, and maybe even part of the horse in an exchange of missiles. From what I have done in re-enactment (take with a pinch of salt), kite shields were more passive protection. Using them actively to strike or push or hook was more difficult than others, which is one reason why shields got smaller around the 1200s (before the age of plate, I would point out – mail armour really worked). Another factor is the guige strap, often there was still a strap looping over the shoulder even when the arm was in the shield by the enarmes (arm straps), which would help support the shield although limit how aggressively you could use it. Most images I have seen of kite shields shows them held vertically rather than at a deliberate angle, although you could tilt it to an extent. It is not too different to round shields when fighting with it, but with a lot of round shields (particularly Viking round shields) they are held by a centre grip instead. I have not got any documentation like the fechtbucher on how shields were fought with, but those were my experiences. I also think the limitations of kite shields sound plausible since the heater design rose. The only sword-and-shield text from the medieval period I know of is the I.33 with bucklers, but I think you could adapt it to a small heater quite easily. Slothful Cobra - Slavery Depends what you mean by medieval Europe. The early Saxons had slaves. The Norse had thralls. Once you get around 1000 AD the practise was dying down. Portugal took advantage of the fact the church’s position on slavery applied mostly to Christians. I have not seen many sources directly addressing slavery in Europe in any kind of detail; there were laws saying not to sell a slave outside the country, then county, etc. Eventually the restrictions on slavery made it functionally the same as serfdom. England was one of the worst places in terms of slavery, at least until the 1200s. The Life of St Wulfstan 1066 has horror stories about slaves in Bristol. There is some stuff on slaves here - http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/sbook1u.asp Unfortunately, most of what I have seen about slavery was just laws saying “don’t do this.” James the 1st - Hanseatic League I do not know too much about the Hanseatic League, other than it was a pretty good example of merchants and guilds being quite powerful at the time. Leagues were a big thing in Germany, considering the divided nature of the Holy Roman Empire, where you had lots of small principalities forming their own semi-independent alliances. Essentially, towns raised their own armies, and delegated to guilds requiring the guilds to produce levies of troops. One of the results of this is you had merchant organisations with access to their own military power, which could be quite effective if they banded together and pooled their resources. In essence, the only thing that truly stood out about the Hansa was how successful it was. They started off in North Germany, with sea access that allowed them to concentrate on markets in the Baltic. That was another reason having troops came in handy, because Scandinavia had been controlling that trade before. Although how successfully is in question. Trade routes required a lot of protection, and they were well-secured against piracy. Also, the Hansa was very loose. Meetings were irregular, lots of cities did not bother sending representatives, and often it just restricted what the Hansa did – not the cities that were part of the Hansa. Essentially it was just an agreement between merchants to help each other out and work towards shared interests rather than against each other. Tailored Sauce - Motte & Bailey Motte & Baileys were for long term use, but the idea was that it starts out as one and then gets upgraded. Windsor Castle was once a motte & bailey, in fact you can still see the motte. Think of it as a working prototype, a sort of intermediate stage between wooden forts and castles. Best way to attack a motte & bailey is fire. Most of the buildings are still fairly flammable, the hard part is just getting past the moat without getting shot. They would typically try to protect the wood with soaked skins and hides, but it was only so much that could be done. Also, if you are going to starve them out, a fire could burn their food stores. If you struggle to get close, you might need to fill in the ditch/moat. On three, sadly the answer is no. I have never read any accounts of fighting a motte & bailey. Bait and Swatch posted:OP and others, what is the prevailing opinion on the accuracy of the three volume series detailing the Crusades by Steven Runciman? I enjoyed reading it, but haven't had time to read other writings discussing the events during the Crusades to check Runciman's statements. If you don't have knowledge on the books, please disregard. I only know a little of Runciman, I read his work 8 months back for my dissertation, but did not find that much I could use. He crafts a very readable narrative, the impression I got is he wrote 3 books with a fairly balanced and neutral narration of the story and then finished it with a conclusion that completely contrasted with the events in the book, though large sections only got skimmed. But essentially in the books he covers political motives, the Greek request for help, the backstory that explains why the Crusaders went there. Then he finishes by saying it was all one long sin of intolerance. That is the big thing that puzzles me about his work. The other criticism I have heard is that Runciman was very much into the Byzantines, so he wrote from that perspective, and he kind of accepted Anna Komnene’s account too uncritically. The way she tells it, the Emperor was a saintly paragon of kindness and the Franks were just ungrateful. I think Runciman could have accounted more for her bias. For an unbiased book, I can recommend John-Riley Smith as a good author. His work is top-notch. Depending on how far back you can go (access to the library) I found Dana Munro, Kingdom of the Crusaders (written in the 1920s) to be an excellent read, which links her comments to the evidence throughout. To cover more on how often one side formed alliances with the other side. The Crusader kingdoms cooperated with Muslims almost constantly, according to James Brundage (The Crusades: A Documentary Survey) the Crusaders desperately wanted peace because it was essential to the trade on which their economy thrived; the Crusader kingdoms were much more trade-based and urbanised than Western Europe at the time. Often, the Crusader alliances with Muslims were more divide-and-rule than anything else, you did not often get the Crusaders joining together with Muslim armies for an integrated campaign. The idea was really to just stop the Muslims from uniting. Just to add that no book seems truly unbiased, Dana Munro & John Riley-Smith both disagree on very specific laws, even though I would recommend both authors. Even translations of the same text can encourage different interpretations. Beaumains posted:I used to lurk the ARMA forums. What are some other sites that are good resources for info and forum discussions? Wiktenauer is an awesome resource. It literally includes translations of the original fightbooks. http://www.wiktenauer.com/ MyArmoury website is also good, with a lot of articles. http://www.myarmoury.com/features.html SwordForum is another, but I don’t see them much. I have seen quite a few people ragging on ARMA. Personally I find them a useful resource, and I would say much of their work online introduces people to medieval combat very well. It is accessible, but eventually you graduate beyond them. kongurous posted:I apologize if this question is too far afield from the specialties of those answering questions here, but what were the methods of personal grooming at the time, and in general, what did people find attractive at the time? I don't imagine manscaping was in vogue in the Middle Ages (or armpit/leg shaving for women, for that matter), but I also imagine that most people didn't just let their hair or bears grow endlessly. Did people clip their nails then? How were these sorts of things accomplished before disposable razors and shaving lotions? I cannot really comment here in detail about grooming methods, but I can say that shaving without lotion is fine. Water works well under most circumstances, it’s a little less comfortable, but not prohibitively so. Lots of different hair and beard styles were known through the ages. Post 1500, long beards and short hair were the thing. Earlier on longer hair and shorter beards were manly. NEED TOILET PAPER posted:I imagine this isn't a common topic for extensive study, but what was medieval footwear like? I know pointed shoes were a Thing, but apart from that I'm totally in the dark. I'm especially interested in the shoes worn by armored knights and such, since I imagine their feet would have to be well-protected while still being light enough that they won't hamper movement on the battlefield. For medieval footwear the turnshoe was pretty popular. I have never really looked at them in depth, but I found this about their construction - http://www.threeriver.org/marshal/shoes_1.shtml Turnshoes are just very simple, straightforward, typically soft leather that I have heard likened to tennis shoes. They would not be unreasonable for a knight to wear. I first heard the term ‘turnshoe’ from a swordsmanship book. Anyway, for armoured knights they would also have mail stockings (chausses) or later on plate armoured coverings called sabatons. Occasionally you might just tie a mail sabaton over the shoe instead. I have heard some suggestions that mail stockings had the soles of the feet mailed but I am sceptical of that. Adeptus7 posted:Why did the Byzantine Theme system break down? Theme system, from how I understand it, was very decentralised. It was very good at raising troops, it gave military commanders the authority to organise local resources to support troops. Farmer-soldiers on leased estates is arguably similar to a scaled-down version of a knight’s fee. I see the Theme system as feudalism-lite. What you get is an army supported at limited cost to the state, but with looser ties to the state as well. Essentially the commander of the Theme has his own army. Private armies just invite civil war. Another problem is mobility, the soldiers were tied to the land and fairly reluctant to leave their territory. Essentially each soldier held some land in exchange for reduced pay, but if he is not there to work his land he does not make the difference from his reduced pay. So it is more difficult to get your army where you need it. A knock-on effect of this is the more secure regions near the centre of the empire see less fighting, so the troops have less incentive to keep themselves battle-ready. Mercenaries were important for being technically apolitical. In the case of the Varangians, Emperor Basil II was scared that Greek guards would have divided loyalties in the empire, so he wanted foreigners with no local loyalties other than him. Interestingly the Varangians obeyed the office of Emperor, not the man. So when Nikephoros II was killed by John Tzimiskes, they rushed to his aid, but since they were too late, Tzimiskies was apparently next in line to be Emperor – so they just knelt to him and started serving him. Not that the Varangian guard never participated in coups, but that is the idea. Another thing is after the 10th century is when the Theme system broke down, so they needed an alternative source of quality troops. Grand Prize Winner posted:What did Europeans write about the habits of Saracens during this period? Also, is 'saracen' an offensive term or just a label for the groups that ruled the Middle East and north Africa at the time? Saracen was not an insult. It gets used in contexts like marrying a Saracen, or being defeated by a Saracen, or working with Saracens who had converted to Christianity. The impression I get is the term was fairly neutral, just because it gets used so dispassionately for so many different things. Normally North Africans were called Moors rather than Saracen. Overall, though, Saracen as a term was rarely any kind of hostility. I have not come across much written by Europeans about the habits of the Saracens. Occasionally you hear small things mentioned about one culture or another in the area - Chaldeans & Armenians get called unwarlike by William of Tyre, I think somewhere in Munro's book (Kingdom of the Crusaders) she mentions Syrians were viewed as timid. A few knights praised Muslims or Saracens "no one could find more powerful or braver or more skillful warriors than they." I have come across very little by Europeans about the habits of Saracens, but I will say that the overwhelming majority of times I saw Saracens mentioned by Europeans when researching my dissertation, the Crusaders had nothing but respect for them. It is actually a notable gap in the sources I have looked through. Edit: That applies more to the Crusaders, in the west, people were less positive towards the Saracens. A few clergymen denounced the Saracens as a “people odious to Divinity”. However, this sort of attitude was people with a vested interest in encouraging war against the Saracens and people with no experience of them. Those who do seem to know the Saracens rarely tell us anything about them. I am going to use an example dealing more with a Moor than a Saracen, but I think it illustrates my frustration. Jorg von Ehingen, fighting an armoured Moorish champion: When the infidels saw I had conquered they drew off their forces. But the Portuguese and Christians approached and cut off the infidel's head, and took his spear, and placed the head upon it, and removed his armour. It was a costly suit, made in the heathen fashion, very strong and richly ornamented. What is the heathen fashion?! I have tried to follow this up, but never found anything solid about North African armour. We get the same problem with Crusader sources, they might mention adopting Saracen customs but often neglect to mention what those customs are. Railtus fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Apr 17, 2013 |
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Apr 17, 2013 05:54
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Cool! But who were they? Is the term 'Saracen' equivalent to the modern "Arab" in scope?
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Apr 17, 2013 06:14
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As a side note, since someone mentioned Braveheart upthread, this: http://medievalscotland.org/scotbiblio/bravehearterrors.shtml is a completely brilliant takedown of it. The author discusses the historical errors in the first two and a half minutes of the movie. There are eighteen.
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Apr 17, 2013 06:55
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Cool! But who were they? Is the term 'Saracen' equivalent to the modern "Arab" in scope? Yes. Saracen was a very broad and general term that did not distinguish between Seljuk Turk or Fatamid Egyptian or anything in-between. One thing I noticed is sources tend to refer to their own group by their religion and the other group by the broad ethnic term. So, for example, Crusader sources would refer to themselves as either Christians or Latins and refer to the Muslim population as Saracens, while the Muslim sources referred to themselves as Muslims and to the westerners as Franks. Namarrgon posted:So I was playing through Assassin's Creed and it got me wondering; was there a culture of recreative fitness for staying in shape and not being a fat monstrosity? We've already discussed knights and their athletic feats but how about the rest? My base assumptions would be that peasants were too poor and hungry to ever become really fat but the rest of society I'm not sure about. Short answer: yes. We know because there were Popes who recommended working out in order to get sexy (Aneneas Sylvius Piccolomini, who later became Pope Pius II). Apparently Johannes de Mirfeld wrote something on this subject in the 1300s including some basic exercises, although I am not familiar with his work. Leon Battista Alberti (1400s) suggested combat training, "for the sake of health rather than sport or pleasure." Which means people did it for health, but also means we know pleasure was one of the reasons for working out and training. In 1283, King Alfonso X of Castile wrote about sports for fun, "in which men use their limbs and therefore relax and take joy". In 1315, a physician in Valencia advised indoor exercises for staying healthy; running up and down the stairs 3 or 4 times and then practising a stick like a sword with one hand until “almost winded.” So yes, an exercising sub-culture was certainly there, and much stronger than I expected. Whether fat was condemned, I can say the ideal body type for a medieval man was an athletic, well-proportioned build. However, that is mostly the case for the fighting classes. I cannot say for sure about other portions of society with as much certainty. Generally wealthy merchants liked to emulate the nobility as much as they could get away with, which would result in similar attitudes towards physique. But that is speculation. PittTheElder posted:Well, not Henry VIII in his prime, certainly. But I've read Henry VIII near the end was horrifyingly gross. If I remember correctly, Henry VIII’s last suit of armour was designed for a 58-60 inch waist. I also think he might have been diabetic, and comfort-ate because his leg hurt like an absolute swine all the time. The ulcer was probably downright disgusting as well. I also think he never psychologically adjusted to the shift from being a previously athletic man to being functionally crippled. I actually feel really sorry for Henry VIII, as much as he was a jerk.
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Apr 17, 2013 07:01
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Adeptus7 posted:Why did the Byzantine Theme system break down? The theme system broke down because it relied heavily on having small plots of land directly owned/farmed by the peasant/soldiers. This was incredibly annoying to the landed aristocracy who wanted that land for themselves. For about two hundred years there was a seesawing effect where military emperors tried to strengthen the system and noble emperors tried to weaken it. In the run-up to Manzikert, the Doukas family gutted the system. After Manzikert, it was too late and the Anatolian heartlands were lost.
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Apr 17, 2013 08:16
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What exactly has caused the modern-day phenomenon of people thinking katanas were the greatest and best sword ever ever ever? This is sort of a combat question and sort of a history question, because I'm sure the roots go back at least two if not three decades. How does an idea like this get started?
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Apr 17, 2013 09:21
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cheerfullydrab posted:What exactly has caused the modern-day phenomenon of people thinking katanas were the greatest and best sword ever ever ever? This is sort of a combat question and sort of a history question, because I'm sure the roots go back at least two if not three decades. How does an idea like this get started? Well for one thing they were so sharp they literally cut through shields, rendering them obsolete on the Home Islands.
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Apr 17, 2013 10:12
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cheerfullydrab posted:What exactly has caused the modern-day phenomenon of people thinking katanas were the greatest and best sword ever ever ever? This is sort of a combat question and sort of a history question, because I'm sure the roots go back at least two if not three decades. How does an idea like this get started? They were used more a symbol of rank and class then anything else, so they adopted a brand of mystique, especially when one family was granted monopoly for making swords for nobles I think sometime in the 16th century. Once cinema comes into existence Samurai are basically the cowboys of Japan, in the 60s and 70s there's a lot of cultural back and forth with Japanese films making it to America, add a possibly unhealthy level of orientalism, and not really understanding the non-romanticized history of Japan, and you've got a perfect storm for weapons either built for unarmored dueling or to be both imposing and light enough to walk around with like a badge, turning into mythical super-weapons on par with Damascus Steel.
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Apr 17, 2013 10:35
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cheerfullydrab posted:What exactly has caused the modern-day phenomenon of people thinking katanas were the greatest and best sword ever ever ever? This is sort of a combat question and sort of a history question, because I'm sure the roots go back at least two if not three decades. How does an idea like this get started? World War II propaganda. Showa-era Japan was ultranationalist and glorified the samurai as a symbol of something specifically Japanese, something without western influences. During the American Occupation of Japan, US soldiers were in a country that had been essentially inundated with propaganda about how Japan did everything best. Another part was katana were used by Japanese officers in WW2. These were shin gunto, introduced because of ultranationalism. Previously, they used kyu gunto which resembled sabres more than anything else. What is true is that the American soldiers did used to shoot the guys with katana first during World War 2 – because they knew the guy with a katana was an officer. However, I have heard people seriously try to suggest that they were shooting the katana guy because they were scared of the swords. To be fair, katana were effective swords, and can be quite impressive. What people in the 1940s did not know was any good-quality sword could accomplish the same things. However, people saw a legitimately decent sword (something new to them) and heard the propaganda of it being the best in the world, and took it for granted. It also makes a better story to take home when you bring home a katana as a souvenir. The shin gunto was also probably more effective than the kyu gunto, further reinforcing the myth. Something Hank Reinhardt has to say about cutting machine gun barrels: “This stunt must have happened several times, because when I tried to track the source, it seems to have occurred on Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Iwo Jima, Tarawa, and several other islands. I have to believe Japanese soldiers have some sort of pathological hatred for machine gun barrels. I have also wondered why they never tried to cut down the gunner.” Frostwerks posted:Well for one thing they were so sharp they literally cut through shields, rendering them obsolete on the Home Islands. Shields disappeared in Japan long before katana made an appearance. Also, when cutting, the cut created by the edge will not be wide enough for the thicker spine of the sword to fit through – you would still need enough force to push the iron bar of the sword through the wood of the shield, regardless of how sharp the edge is. I have never found any evidence to support the idea of katana slicing through shields. If you know of any though, I would love to see it. Also, a metal rim around the edge of the shield and a metal boss on the hand would also be really easy counters to shield-cutting blades. Railtus fucked around with this message at 13:35 on Apr 17, 2013 |
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Apr 17, 2013 13:31
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Do you have sources about armor penetration, where they have counted how many joules you need to get through and how many joules you get out of different weapons. I have The Knight and the Blast Furnace: A History of the Metallurgy of Armour in the Middle Ages & the Early Modern Period, are there others? I'd be especially interested in pre-medieval armors.
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Apr 17, 2013 13:55
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cheerfullydrab posted:What exactly has caused the modern-day phenomenon of people thinking katanas were the greatest and best sword ever ever ever? This is sort of a combat question and sort of a history question, because I'm sure the roots go back at least two if not three decades. How does an idea like this get started? Japan exported a lot of cheesy chanbara movies to the US, so people got more exposure to the katana and other Japanese stuff than they did to other cultures (Hong Kong also exported a lot of cheesy movies, so you see similar stuff about Chinese martial arts too). So stuff extolling the katana was something people were more likely to find when they started reading more about Japan. This combined with the overall disdain for the medieval period in the broad culture to further puff up this exoticized version of Japanese culture as a superior version of our tawdry past. It is worth noting that a lot of specific stuff about the katana is fairly recent in pop culture- although people took back imitation katana from the Pacific Theater, the mythology in the US doesn't really start to spring up until the 1980s as far as I'm aware. Of course, katana also have the advantage of a well-described manufacturing process that has bits of endogenous mythology and legends attached, so even if, say, Iran or Pakistan had exported its own equivalent films, we probably wouldn't see the same level of awe attached to talwars and shamshirs today either. But in general, exotic things tend to be fetishized by the consumer. This happens for more than just katana, and extends all the way to people fetishizing other people because of their presumed exotic status. I would suggest reading Edward Said's Orientalism for further information, but it is a long read and more concerned with the effects of such fetishization.
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Apr 17, 2013 14:05
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Hogge Wild posted:Do you have sources about armor penetration, where they have counted how many joules you need to get through and how many joules you get out of different weapons. I have The Knight and the Blast Furnace: A History of the Metallurgy of Armour in the Middle Ages & the Early Modern Period, are there others? I'd be especially interested in pre-medieval armors. I do not have other significant sources like that. There is an article on padded armour, which cites Dr Williams, so it may just be the same tests as from the book. http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_spot_quilted.php
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Apr 17, 2013 14:07
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Railtus posted:Shields disappeared in Japan long before katana made an appearance. Also, when cutting, the cut created by the edge will not be wide enough for the thicker spine of the sword to fit through – you would still need enough force to push the iron bar of the sword through the wood of the shield, regardless of how sharp the edge is. I'm not sure if it necessarily indicates that they could cut through a shield, but Japanese swords could cleave an (unarmored) person in two without too much difficulty. One pastime of the warrior class in Japan was to pile up the corpses of executed criminals and see how many you could cleave through with one stroke. I've read old texts where warriors claim their sword could cut through as many as four or five bodies at once. Of course those sources are notorious for exaggeration (an army of a couple of thousand becomes a multitude of tens or even hundreds of thousands of soldiers) so take that with a grain of salt. Also it's not really true that shields disappeared in Japan pre-katana; shields were used with great frequency in Japan for hundreds of years. It's just that they got larger and larger until the point that they couldn't be realistically carried while fighting. This photo shows what Japanese shields looked like. They were actually really important, because the bow was the dominant weapon in Japanese warfare until the arrival of firearms and defense against arrows was paramount. Swords were really an auxiliary weapon at best in Japan until the Edo period, when the samurai became less soldiers than bureaucrats that wore swords. It wasn't really until the tail end of the samurai-as-soldier era that all those sword-based martial arts became a thing.
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Apr 17, 2013 16:04
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Genpei Turtle posted:This photo shows what Japanese shields looked like. They were actually really important, because the bow was the dominant weapon in Japanese warfare until the arrival of firearms and defense against arrows was paramount. In Europe those types of standing shield-walls are known as pavises. They were used extensively by archers and crossbowmen during medieval sieges. Japanese soldiers used them similarly. But in truth they're more of a field fortification than a personal shield. To my understanding, Japan stopped using shields relatively earlier than Europe because of the scarcity of metal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavise
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Apr 17, 2013 16:28
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Kaal posted:In Europe those types of standing shield-walls are known as pavises. They were used extensively by archers and crossbowmen during medieval sieges. Japanese soldiers used them similarly. But in truth they're more of a field fortification than a personal shield. To my understanding, Japan stopped using shields relatively earlier than Europe because of the scarcity of metal. Yep, pretty much. (The field fortification bit) But it wasn't at all uncommon for individual soldiers to have their own. Japan stopping using personal shields was in great part a change in the makeup of their forces. During the Nara period when most soldiers were conscripts, they used double-edged swords and shields, modeled mostly after what the Chinese were using at the time. However the conscripted soldiers proved to be very ineffective against the hit-and-run raids of the Emishi tribes from the north and east that they were fighting, so conscription was abolished at the end of the 8th century in favor of a decentralized military organized by provincial nobility. That nobility (which eventually evolved into the samurai) had access to better military technology and more importantly horses--they quickly took up mounted archery as their primary form of warfare, which proved to be far more effective against the Emishi. Since you need both hands for mounted archery, there isn't a lot of room for personal shields so they rapidly fell out of favor. Instead the shields became incorporated into the development of armor, which is why you see those huge sode (extended shoulder mounts) on Japanese armor.
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Apr 17, 2013 16:54
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Genpei Turtle posted:I'm not sure if it necessarily indicates that they could cut through a shield, but Japanese swords could cleave an (unarmored) person in two without too much difficulty. One pastime of the warrior class in Japan was to pile up the corpses of executed criminals and see how many you could cleave through with one stroke. I've read old texts where warriors claim their sword could cut through as many as four or five bodies at once. Of course those sources are notorious for exaggeration (an army of a couple of thousand becomes a multitude of tens or even hundreds of thousands of soldiers) so take that with a grain of salt. I know, but thanks for the information all the same. What I would say is most cutting-oriented swords could cleave an unarmoured man in two without too much difficulty. Yes, pavise-style or mantlet-style shields were in Japan much later, but were not conventional hand-held shields of the kind used at sword range still in decline much earlier (rare by 1100 or so)?
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Apr 17, 2013 20:26
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Railtus posted:I know, but thanks for the information all the same. What I would say is most cutting-oriented swords could cleave an unarmoured man in two without too much difficulty. I wouldn't be surprised. My thoughts were more along the line that if a weapon could cleave through something as tough as bone like that with no trouble, I could see it getting through a (wooden) shield as well. quote:Yes, pavise-style or mantlet-style shields were in Japan much later, but were not conventional hand-held shields of the kind used at sword range still in decline much earlier (rare by 1100 or so)? I'm not really an expert (more of a politics guy than a military guy) but by 1100 I'd imagine yes, you'd be hard-pressed to find conventional hand-held shields like that in general use. Probably substantially earlier even. As for whether or not the katana predated the disuse of hand-held shields, though, I think that kind of depends on what you define a katana as. Strictly speaking any single-edged sword counts as a katana, and the single-edged chokuto was in use before the decline of hand-held shields. If you define a katana as having a curved blade (like a tachi or a wakizashi) then the two are fairly concurrent as those didn't start becoming common until the Heian. (794-1185) If you define a katana as an uchigatana, which is probably about the length that most people think of when they think of a katana, then it way post-dates the disuse of hand-held shields. There's a goon who's like an expert on Japanese warfare and armor in particular who could probably answer this better than I could, but I forget who. 
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Apr 17, 2013 21:28
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So I realize some of this might overlap with minstrel talk earlier in the thread, but tell me about jesters. How did one become a jester? It seems like a position that would be sort of difficult to apply for (and to judge the credentials of applicants on). Did they really wear the cap with bells on it, or is that just visual shorthand from art and now we always associate it with them (like Vikings and horned helmets)? Most importantly, were they really the official "tell it like it is, even when it's to the king and he's in a bad mood" brutally honest guys in court like Shakespeare depicted his fools? Because I feel like actual royalty might not have had the patience to adhere to that kind of system. Sooner or later you're bound to prank the Earl of Wherever on a day when his frustration trumps the sacred untouchability of the jester.
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Apr 18, 2013 03:12
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Guys I was being an rear end in a top hat. And yet we still all learned something. You're welcome.
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Apr 18, 2013 06:14
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Do you happen to know anything about medieval festivals? I'm particularly interested in the ones that fit the theme of "opposite-day" in which social roles were reversed. During the Feast of Fools a child would be picked to play the role of Lord of Misrule and get to be Abbot of Unreason/Boy Bishop/Pope of Fools for a day. Everyone would dress up in the opposite of church-clothing (cross-dressing, outrageous outfits) and move to the church in a procession where the Lord of Misrule would be 'consecrated' via a series of ridiculous ceremonies. Everyone partied it up while blaspheming heartily and mocking the Church. It also often featured a play about the flight to Egypt celebrating the donkey that carried Maria to Bethlehem. A donkey would stand next to the altar during the sermon in which the priest would often bray and the congregation bray their resonses back, like in this song I found: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySXYoKockpQ.  They had all kinds of reversal-themed festivals like these where the sexes would switch places, beggars be crowned king, or fools replaced high officials. People would cross-dress, dress up like animals or just put on the most ridiculous outfit they can think of. April Fool's and Carnival have survived to this day. Also, Plough Monday has recently been revived in some parts of England:  quote:The FOOL PLOUGH goes about : a pageant consisting of a number of sword dancers dragging a plough, with music; one, sometimes two, in very strange attire; the Bessy, in the grotesque habit of an old woman, and the Fool, almost covered with skins, a hairy cap on, and the tail of some animal hanging from his back. The office of one of these characters, in which he is very assiduous, is to go about rattling a box amongst the spectators of the dance, in which he receives their little donations. If someone didn't want to donate, they'd plough up their front yard. Trick or treat. 
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Apr 18, 2013 10:09
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What were widely used  drugs back then?
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Apr 19, 2013 02:24
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Imapanda posted:What were widely used Hashish was frequently consumed in the Middle East and I know there were quite a few people experiencing epiphanies using shrooms in the west but more I don't know.
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Apr 19, 2013 20:32
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Imapanda posted:What were widely used Related question: What's the low-down on viking berserkers? I've heard that nordic/viking war paint was made out of some sort of plant with hallucinogenic properties, so these guys would get high as balls and then just charge the front lines of whatever it was they were facing off against. Any truth to that?
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Apr 20, 2013 01:21
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Solomonic posted:So I realize some of this might overlap with minstrel talk earlier in the thread, but tell me about jesters. How did one become a jester? It seems like a position that would be sort of difficult to apply for (and to judge the credentials of applicants on). Did they really wear the cap with bells on it, or is that just visual shorthand from art and now we always associate it with them (like Vikings and horned helmets)? Jesters are actually something I have never come across since I made a serious study of medieval history. The earliest jester I know of directly is a guy called Stanczyk born in 1480, I actually wonder if it was more of Renaissance/Early Modern institution rather than a medieval one. There are hints of it earlier, Philllippe VI’s jester (1340) is said to have made a crack about an unsuccessful naval battle, “The English don’t even have the guts to jump into the water like our brave French.” Henry VII had a “luter play the fool” which essentially means he had a minstrel telling jokes, but again I suspect that was not the same thing as the enshrined position of court jester. Some sources from the 1400s suggest there was considerable overlap with minstrels. There is an Irish story, the Death of Fergus Mac Leide, dating back to 1100, in which a court poet contradicts the flattery of some courtiers… and gets arrested for it. Overall there seems to have been fools, it seems to have been known about, but the idea of fools as a special class with a license to offend the king seems to be sporadic and inconsistent. Scotland passed a law in 1449 forbidding someone from trying to pass oneself off as a fool in court. Henry VIII had a fool named Will Sommers, who was presented to the king by a merchant who attracted his attention, and Henry just offered Sommers the job on a whim. However, he did not seem to have full tell-it-as-it-is privileges either, as Henry VIII threatened his life on occasion, and one of his main skills was using humour as a way to draw the king’s attention to serious matters without being offensive. Essentially you had to be diplomatic as a jester. PiratePing posted:Do you happen to know anything about medieval festivals? I'm particularly interested in the ones that fit the theme of "opposite-day" in which social roles were reversed. Next to nothing, sadly. There were a huge amount of religious festivals, I think the main thing of note about them was that they were essentially bank holidays, so people spent the day in rest or amusement. Some google-foo isn’t giving me anything concrete or that I trust, either. Imapanda posted:What were widely used Beer was one. More beer was another. Ale and spirits were some more. A Cunning Woman could do some interesting things with herbs, although recreational drugs tend not to get mentioned that much. On the other hand, this could be mostly due to the imbalance of the evidence. A list of drugs available at the time is listed here - http://cunnan.sca.org.au/wiki/Medieval_Narcotics (source chosen more for its accessibility than its reliability). I hesitate to call any drugs widely used, however. Around, yes, but they do not appear to be normal. Buried alive posted:Related question: What's the low-down on viking berserkers? I've heard that nordic/viking war paint was made out of some sort of plant with hallucinogenic properties, so these guys would get high as balls and then just charge the front lines of whatever it was they were facing off against. Any truth to that? The war paint with hallucinogenic properties was called woad, although those properties are very much in question. Mike Loades in Swords & Swordsmen suggests some other more interesting properties of woad; it is antiseptic, reducing the risk of infection, and it apparently helps to stop bleeding. The context he mentions this in is a Celt tribe that fought naked (I don’t have the book with me). Woad was definitely known to the Vikings, they visited parts of England that used it as a dye, but I think they did not make that much use of it as body paint. Mushrooms have been suggested (fly amanita), although again, there is no solid evidence for it. It is all just speculation. A version of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is also suggested as a cause. Another possibility was just getting drunk off your skull. It is all speculation, I think more than one cause is very likely. This is a long way to just say we don't have any clear answers on the subject. The sagas portray berserkers as going into frenzies all of a sudden, in situations that imply it was something that happened by itself rather than induced – which might dent the drugs theory. Skallagrim nearly kills his own son during a ball game. On the other hand, the sagas just as often portray berserkers as werewolves/bears or sorcerers as enraged warriors, so take that with a pinch of salt. Slight tangent: Viking Answer Lady has some interesting comments on berserkers, and one is the possibility that Grendel from Beowulf was supposed to be a berserker rather than a troll or similar monster.
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Apr 20, 2013 06:11
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Railtus posted:Mushrooms have been suggested (fly amanita), although again, there is no solid evidence for it. It is all just speculation. A version of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is also suggested as a cause. Regarding PTSD throughout the ages, you got any interesting speculation about fey and fell fugue states? Is fugue even the right word? Psychiatry ain't my bag.
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Apr 20, 2013 07:24
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Railtus posted:To be fair, katana were effective swords, and can be quite impressive. What people in the 1940s did not know was any good-quality sword could accomplish the same things. However, people saw a legitimately decent sword (something new to them) and heard the propaganda of it being the best in the world, and took it for granted. It also makes a better story to take home when you bring home a katana as a souvenir. To add to this a little even though pretty much everything important has been said, until quite recently the perception in the West of medieval swords was large, heavy and unwieldy slabs of metal that no man could reasonably swing around. A lot of this is a direct result of Renaissance propaganda being rediscovered during the Victorian era, with a healthy dose of romanticisation of the Renaissance and demonisation of the 'Dark Ages.' Many extant swords were either buried in fields or rivers, or were pristine ceremonial swords covered in jewels and filigree, weighing up to twice what a similarly-styled sword intended for battle would. The weight of these ceremonial swords was extrapolated and as a result actual scholars have written about 20 kilogram swords being swung around by people more like gorillas than men. The upshot of all of this is that when people were presented with actual swords intended for battle (even if they were just drop-forged from relatively cheap steel), they were amazed to find that they were quite light and could cut all kinds of things rather than just being used as clubs. This combined with the mystique and mysticism surrounding the traditional forging methods, propaganda, the introduction of kendo to the rest of the world and the general lack of accurate information about medieval European techniques and you end up with a perception that the katana is the greatest thing in the history of slicing things.
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Apr 20, 2013 11:39
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Railtus posted:Next to nothing, sadly. There were a huge amount of religious festivals, I think the main thing of note about them was that they were essentially bank holidays, so people spent the day in rest or amusement. Some google-foo isn’t giving me anything concrete or that I trust, either. I don't have another question, I just wanted to share this great piece of propaganda. Let yourself be healed by Jesus the Apothecary, if God didn't want us to heal ourselves he wouldn't have given us all this great medicine when he gave the Earth to Adam and Eve!  Bibliothèque nationale de France, Français 1537, detail of f. 82v [Le restaurant qui pour mort rend la vie]. Chants royaux sur la Conception, couronnés au puy de Rouen de 1519 à 1528. 16th century
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Apr 20, 2013 12:35
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"The restaurant that gives life to the dead"? They must do one hell of a filet.
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Apr 20, 2013 13:51
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The illuminator needs to work a little harder on his anatomy, jeez.
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Apr 20, 2013 15:30
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