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Interesting stuff, thank you all. My suspicion had been that the whole poisoned-weapon thing was a fiction, because if Europeans had had access to something equivalent to curare, it'd have been a big player in warfare and I'd have heard about it before now, but the use of aconite was something new to me. I may need to buy that book.
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Apr 29, 2014 21:35
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Stormtrooper posted:- In art: BNF NAF 5243 f. 46r: http://manuscriptminiatures.com/4365/16764/ I just want to say that the way one of the guys on the right has his thumb cocked makes the picture hilarious. "Check out Sir Fruits-a-lot over there with the basket on his hat."
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Apr 29, 2014 22:13
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Railtus posted:Thanks! I really love some of those images. I notice an interesting detail, the flickr artefact mentions they had a very short period of popularity (1320-1350). Do you find that pattern with the artwork? Does it all seem to be concentrated around a certain stage of transitional armour? http://effigiesandbrasses.com/745/3002/ http://effigiesandbrasses.com/3788/3344/ http://effigiesandbrasses.com/2815/6042/ Railtus posted:I am also curious about the one picture where a guy appears to be wearing boiled leather vambraces and rerebraces (forearms and upper arms for readers unfamiliar with the terms), but he seems to have splinted leg armour and I think a coat-of-plates or corrozina on the body. Do you have any thoughts why he might use hardened leather for arms in combination with splinted metal for legs?
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Apr 30, 2014 00:06
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Rabhadh posted:It's almost the millennium of the Battle of Clontarf! Does anyone have any hypothesises on how an army of guys reputedly lacking in metal armour is supposed to defeat an army of guys who make great use of metallic armour in a stand up fight between shield walls?! [quote=] Brian's grandson Toirdelbach was killed. He pursued the enemy into the sea, but was hit by a wave and thrown up against the weir, and drowned.[33] [/quote] I find the thought process before his death hilarious. "I'm going to chase the men in full metal armor into the sea so I can stab them before they drown!"
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May 2, 2014 22:22
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I am going to correct myself on an earlier point made in the thread. When discussing sallet-bevor combinations, I was of the mind that the limited head movement I experienced was the result of not fitting. Someone else, whose name I can't remember, said that head movement was not really a priority even with matching sets intended to be worn together. Later research tells me said someone else was right. This link - http://www.hammaborg.de/en/archiv/wien/index.php - shows a sallet with a built-in bevor, perhaps a transitional stage between sallet and close-helmet. This style of bevor would move with the head, and would explain the gradual changes in helmets after the sallet.
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May 9, 2014 15:35
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Crossposting this from the ancient history thread because I've asked twice there and not received any answer. It's kind of an edge case whether it would be late classical or super early medieval, so it's worth a shot:Cyrano4747 posted:I'm looking for a few good recommendations on general texts on the areas east of the Rhine and north of the Danube during the classical era and early medieval period. Basically think Germania from about the first century BC through the 7th century or so. Roughly Caesar => Charlemagne.
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May 14, 2014 01:04
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So that this thread doesn't die: What made the medieval Swiss so formidable? Didn't other people have halberds and/or discipline?
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May 15, 2014 16:05
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Well until Hegel shows up to school us my best guess is one: Due to being far better disciplined from the units being recruited from cohesive mountain communities coupled with opponents being mostly mercs with lower morale if things got dicey. And two, think they got more experience earlier then most other people in pike tactics due to having run off various Hapsburg/Burgundian efforts to stomp on them.
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May 15, 2014 17:49
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I was talking about the 14th century, which I did not think was Hegel's area of expertise. Specifically, around the time of the battle Morgarten. Were pikes big in the 1300s? I thought they didn't really really experience their renaissance until the early modern period. I could easily be wrong about all of these statements, though.
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May 16, 2014 01:09
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tweekinator posted:So that this thread doesn't die: A little bit of information here - http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_armies_swiss.html - a lot of my comments are mostly extrapolated from this. Yes, another name for the halberd was the Swiss voulge, implying that the voulge was already known about elsewhere. During the Hundred Years War the billhook was popular with the English and so on. A Lochaber axe is relatively halberd-like. Other people did have discipline. You see examples with the Flemish, the English in the Hundred Years War, and others depending on the leader. I think the difference with the Swiss was the consistency of discipline. Troops from elsewhere might be very disciplined or poorly disciplined, although the Swiss mercenaries were almost certainly very disciplined. Another thing is the Swiss tended to have more varied troops when fighting on their own, implying the feared mercenaries tended to be among the better soldiers. The Swiss cantons seemed a little more professionalised in their military organisation compared with the feudal forces of the period. For instance, the French armies at Crecy and Agincourt were divided (although this is an extreme example), and those divisions and conflicting command structures hurt them. By comparison, the Swiss cantons seemed to have clear chains of command and were perhaps a little more meritocratic than other places at the time. Mobility was a big issue. A Swiss pike square could attack at a run, and it would be just as plausible with halberds, and they seemed to like ambushes quite a bit. Everybody likes ambushes, when not on the receiving end, although I think the significance is the Swiss mobility would allow them to hit a charge before the opposing army has chance to recover. In some cases the Swiss would be able to advance and hit the enemy between two volleys of firearms. Obviously there are countermeasures for that such as staggered fire, earthworks to slow the enemy down, and so on, although I think it is a good illustration of how abrupt the Swiss advance could be. To some degree, others were important and successful with similar tactics. For instance, take the Scottish at Bannockburn, with their schiltroms. Compare that with Falkirk, where the Scottish formations were essentially static and defensive (and got shot to pieces by the English). In short, the Swiss could use their formations aggressively, rapidly and in good order. tweekinator posted:I was talking about the 14th century, which I did not think was Hegel's area of expertise. Specifically, around the time of the battle Morgarten. Were pikes big in the 1300s? I thought they didn't really really experience their renaissance until the early modern period. I could easily be wrong about all of these statements, though. Pikes were certainly a thing among the Flemish and the Scots in the 1300s, although as late as the 1380s (Sempach) the Swiss were still using halberds heavily.
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May 16, 2014 10:03
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Hey Gal, I've heard the idea that one reason the Swiss were so successful is because they were from a mountainous area with no nobles, making them focus on organized infantry all along. Unlike, say, France, which had always treated the nobles as elite cavalry specializing in single combat, and viewed all the rest as second class filler troops. Any opinion?
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May 16, 2014 19:50
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Railtus posted:A little bit of information here - http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_armies_swiss.html - a lot of my comments are mostly extrapolated from this. This great, thanks for the reply! Though, how exactly does a pike square perform an ambush? It seems like the large number of dudes with the 10ft+ pikes might make them fairly easy to spot.
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May 16, 2014 21:02
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tweekinator posted:This great, thanks for the reply! If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.  Jokes aside, I know one Swiss ambush (Morgarten 1315) started with rolling boulders down the mountains at the enemy, although this was before the ascendency of the pike. My thought is they made the most of high ground for hiding places and could lay their pikes down before the charge: if there was a system that could make it easier to recover your pike quickly without the pikes being grabbed at random. This is all speculation, although the tactic of lying flat on the ground so that gunshots missed them and then rising up to charge before the enemy reloaded tells me the Swiss could retrieve their pikes from the ground quickly without tangling up the formation. Another detail was in Weapons That Made Britain, Mike Loades showed different ways to carry a 12 foot lance so that you could creep through undergrowth. This relied on a lanyard with the lance and holding it low, and was shown on horseback, although I see no reason why a pikeman on foot could not do something similar.
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May 16, 2014 21:40
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About 20 pages ago there was some discussion about whether there were any Ethiopians involved in the Crusades (there weren't.) Anyway, I read a book a while back about the 4th Crusade which described crusaders meeting a black Christian pilgrim from Ethiopia in Constantinople. The man had apparently gone on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and from there to Constantinople planning to next journey to Rome. The original source for the story is Robert de Clari's account of the Crusade, but the particular incident is second hand. Anyone knowledgeable enough about medieval Ethiopian history to say how credible this story is?
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May 16, 2014 22:36
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Railtus posted:If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. Very cool! I'm going to try and find that lance carrying method on youtube.
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May 17, 2014 14:50
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tweekinator posted:Very cool! I'm going to try and find that lance carrying method on youtube. Found it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-F9WJlqcCQ - 3 minutes in.
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May 17, 2014 17:01
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This is late, but thank you for taking the time to respond and then to find the exact part of the specific youtube video. I appreciate it.
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May 21, 2014 01:11
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Getting away from the history of combat, I have a medieval history question: Could you describe the political relationship of the Papacy to the European nobility? I was particularly wondering about the origin of the Pope's special position as head of the Church (although that might be a question for the classical history thread) and how his legal authority was maintained. I would also like to know what the nobility of Catholic Europe thought about the Italian domination of the position, especially with successions of wicked popes you get at various times, and if that relationship changed as we get into the High Middle Ages and early Renaissance where the Papacy is blatantly and obviously dominated by wealthy Italian families. The nobility of Europe can't have been stupid; I'm sure that if they knew what was going on they would have been just as upset as modern people are when they hear about Papal corruption. What was their attitude towards the church's corruption and cynical political motives?
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May 21, 2014 04:31
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I really want to see how 100 dudes could pull off the ol' Surprise! Pike Square! tactic.
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May 21, 2014 05:28
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Look at this: Hide the pikes in the woods, march out when they're almost through, blocking front and rear. A really nasty situation for the Austrians, they're caught between the woods & pikes and the swampy terrain of the Trombach.
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May 21, 2014 08:52
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Arglebargle III posted:Getting away from the history of combat, I have a medieval history question: I hope I'm not stepping on any toes, but I'm doing a PhD in medieval religious and cultural history, so I thought I might be able to help. I work on the early Middle Ages though, so my remarks on the later period should be taken with a grain of salt. In the early Middle Ages, popes couldn't claim, or at least couldn't exercise, any sort of special authority. The western, Latin church in the early Middle Ages was regional, and local bishops generally enjoyed a high degree of autonomy. The historian Peter Brown defines early medieval Christianity as a series of "micro-Christendoms" (on that note, Brown's The Rise of Western Christendom is an excellent introduction to early medieval Christianity). The pope still had a degree of special influence. For example, Boniface sought papal sanction for his missions and reforms. However, in the early medieval period, I don't think we can talk about popes possessing the level of religious and legal authority of later periods. Instead, the pope as head of the Latin Church was elaborated over the course of the central and late Middle Ages. I think two related were important foundations for this process: the 10th- and 11th-century reform movements and the investiture controversy. Broadly speaking, around the turn of the millennium, both lay people and members of the church hierarchy became increasingly concerned with the purity and moral integrity of the church and the clergy. The impulse to reform was picked up by the papacy in the eleventh century, which attempted to stamp out simony (the selling of church positions for money, named after Simon Magus, who tried to buy the power of God from Peter) and nicolaitism (the practice of clergymen having wives or concubines; I think it's named after an earlier Christian heresy). In order to institute the reform, the papacy, under Gregory VII, claimed an expanded role in the administration of the Latin Church and a special role in deciding on matters of church doctrine. The Investiture Controversy was related to this reform movement. In the 11th century, the German Emperor (and other monarchs) claimed the right to appoint bishops. Because of the reform movement, this was now interpreted as a form of simony, and Gregory VII told Emperor Henry IV to knock it off. Naturally, the emperor wasn't pleased with this demand and pushed back, resulting in a pronounced dispute between the emperor and the pope, as well as a period of civil war within the empire as Gregory Henry's dukes to depose him. I'm glossing over a lot of this complicated conflict, but the end result was a compromise in which secular rulers gave up the right to appoint bishops, but retained unofficial influence over the process. The Investiture Controversy forced Gregory and the other reformers to articulate a basically unprecedented level of papal influence in the Latin Church. Gregory, or someone in his circle, produced a document called the dictatus papae, which to my knowledge is the first overt claim that the pope's authority over the church was universal. It also legitimated the pope calling for the overthrow of a secular ruler. I confess I don't know a ton about the legal underpinnings of papal authority, but I think they only really get systematized starting in the second half of the 12th century in connection with the rediscovery of Roman law in the medieval west. The papacy of Innocent III, who was trained as a lawyer before he became pope, was particularly important to this process. I don't have a great answer for the rest of your question, but I do want to stress a few things. First, throughout the Middle Ages and early modern periods the people most concerned with corruption and impurity in the church are members of the church hierarchy (As a side note, it's also important to remember that corruption and impurity are almost always in the eye of the beholder. The priests who paid for their office or had wives I mentioned earlier weren't doing something aberrant, they were practicing Christianity as it had always been practiced in their world). Remember, Martin Luther was a catholic priest. Second, part of the reason the papacy occupied an increasingly central position in medieval religious life is because people invited papal intervention in local disputes. Do you disagree with the election of someone to a particular church position? Bring in the pope. Want to get divorced? A letter from the pope saying your wife is actually too closely related to you will do the trick. I work on the medieval cult of the saints, and in that context the reason the papacy plays an increasingly important role in the canonization process is because curators of local saints' cults sought papal sanction. My point is that the spread of papal authority isn't just about ambitious popes extending their power; a more involved papacy frequently worked for people operating on the local level. That said, secular rulers and the papacy frequently butted heads. Invading Italy and harassing the pope in Rome was a frequent pastime of German emperors. Popes always had worldly interests, and these frequently were in conflict with those of other rulers. Also, the papacy had always been largely dominated by Roman aristocratic families, so in that sense the later medieval situation isn't totally new. This is just conjecture, but I get the feeling that aristocrats and rulers were perfectly happy with a "corrupt" papacy as long as they got what they wanted. If they were fighting with the pope they might squawk about papal corruption, but in that case the criticism seems determined by the dispute rather than genuine outrage at corruption. On a final note, I'm always leery of the common narrative that the medieval papacy is increasingly corrupt and cynical. A lot of that image, particularly in the English historiographical tradition, comes down to us from later Protestant criticisms of the papacy. I'm not trying to go the other way and say that the papacy was a pious and just institution, but in my opinion the rhetoric of papal corruption obfuscates a lot of the nuance and complexity in the history of the papacy. I hope that helps answer your question somewhat!
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May 21, 2014 17:09
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A good post.
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May 22, 2014 02:37
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What about the Avignon popes? Weren't they a blatant attempt by the French nobility to get into the papacy racket? Having a pet pope would be handy to the French kings, and in France, you didn't have to worry about sending an army to Italy to intimidate him.
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May 22, 2014 05:46
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Finally finished reading the thread and I'd like to thank railtus and everyone for a really enjoyable and educational experience. I've learned things I didn't know I wanted to know. I've built up a bunch of questions, but I'll try and ask them slowly so I don't just overwhelm everyone / have half of them ignored. So to start, I asked this one in the ancient history thread and I've been told the answer is definitely medieval, so here goes. Can anybody tell me about the adoption of feudalism and particularly serfdom in parts of europe never conquered by the romans? Especially germany?
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May 23, 2014 04:17
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I believe that it was a response to the Vikings and a way of controlling/defending huge tracts of land, at least in the Carolingian empire and England.
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May 23, 2014 13:01
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tweekinator posted:I believe that it was a response to the Vikings and a way of controlling/defending huge tracts of land, at least in the Carolingian empire and England. The Carolingian empire was in modern day france right? I would have thought they'd be direct inheritors of Diocletians reforms in the later roman empire which required people to practice the same trade as their fathers. The roman history thread told me that's where serfdom originated in europe but I was wondering how it started in non roman europe. Was serfdom a thing in anglo saxon britain? How similar was the jarl / thane relationship of scandanavia (and germany?) I was under the impression that the lowest class in these societies was a slave class but I have no ideas as to it's size.
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May 24, 2014 06:03
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I think the northern european tradition ran more towards yeomanry. You don't tend to hear about yeoman peasants in the romance world nearly as much.
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May 24, 2014 06:26
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rock rock posted:Finally finished reading the thread and I'd like to thank railtus and everyone for a really enjoyable and educational experience. I've learned things I didn't know I wanted to know. I've built up a bunch of questions, but I'll try and ask them slowly so I don't just overwhelm everyone / have half of them ignored. Serfdom can probably be traced back to Roman legal unfreedom, but there was certainly a distinction between free and unfree people beyond the Roman frontiers, so I'd hesitate to call it the evolution of a purely Roman form. That said, the development of serfdom has its roots in two phenomena in the early Middle Ages. The first is the expansion of aristocratic and state power starting roughly in the eighth century. After the collapse/decline/change/whatever term you prefer of the Western Empire in the fifth century, the power of states and landowners to coerce the labor and appropriate the agricultural produce of peasants was at a low point. Broadly speaking, aristocrats and states were increasingly able to do those things over the course of the early Middle Ages and acquired much more control over the people who lived and worked on their estates. The second and related process is the changing ways land was used and agricultural produce extracted and distributed. In the post-Roman, "low power" world, the rule of the day was generally subsistence agriculture. Produce was consumed by the communities which created it. However, again starting in roughly the eighth century, land lords began again to organize larger estates which allowed them to more easily appropriate the produce of their tenants. Where these estates popped up, both free and unfree peasants were granted and worked small plots of land. Unfree tenants, however, were also expected to work the lord's personal lands for a certain number of days out of the year. So this, I think, is the origin of serfdom. Over the course of the early Middle Ages some peasants were increasingly bound to lords who were more able to demand their labor and agricultural surplus. In this sense, while serfdom as a legal phenomenon might be the evolution of a Roman form, I'd argue that as a social and economic condition it is a medieval development both within the borders of the former Roman Empire and without. I also want to stress that the situation I very broadly described does not hold for all regions. There is a lot of variation in how serfdom developed, and many places where peasants were able to resist enserfment for much longer, like Catalonia. As for how serfdom spread to the regions which now make up Germany there are a few factors. In places like the Rhineland, patterns of landholding resembled the situation I described above. Monasteries like Lorsch and Fulda became huge landowners as people made donations to these institutions. In Saxony the increased domination of peasants by aristocrats was introduced quickly and forcibly when Charlemagne conquered the region at the turn of the ninth century. However, I think serfdom developed in Germany (at least in the west) generally developed along similar lines: lords got more powerful, controlled more land, and were able to demand labor services from their tenants. deadking fucked around with this message at 23:43 on May 25, 2014 |
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May 24, 2014 14:13
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rock rock posted:The Carolingian empire was in modern day france right? I would have thought they'd be direct inheritors of Diocletians reforms in the later roman empire which required people to practice the same trade as their fathers. The roman history thread told me that's where serfdom originated in europe but I was wondering how it started in non roman europe.  The Carolingian Empire encompassed France, parts of Spain, most of Germany and and Italy. It was pretty huge. I don't believe serfdom was a thing, or at least a big one, in Anglo-Saxon Britain. They were big into slaves prior to the conquest, with either 10% or 25% of the population being slaves until William made them cut that poo poo out. In Norse society, the slave class was called thralls. I don't know much more than that. The thanes were apparently the Norse equivalent of courtiers.
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May 24, 2014 14:45
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tweekinator posted:
In the Icelandic Commonwealth the ruling class were chieftains known as goðar. The country was split into four regions and each regions had about 9 goðar and each goði had his "goðorð" which is a bit like a fiefdom except not quite. The title of goði was usually inherited but it could also be sold or given. Some goðar maintained temples and holy sites and held blóts. Each goði had his þingmenn, men who followed him to assemblies, supported him in conflicts in exchange for his protection and mediation in feuds. Since any free land owning man could choose which goði to follow the goðorð of each goði wasn't really based on geography. It's however likely that people usually choose the goði that lived closest to them out of convenience since medieval Iceland was very rural without any villages and with long distances between most farms following a goði that lived several weeks travel away might be a hassle and not sit well with the goði that lived closer. Every goði was a member of the alþing, a yearly national assembly that was both a parliament and a supreme court. The descendants of Ingólfur Arnarsson, the first permanent settler, held the title of Allsherjargoði which despite the fancier title didn't have any more power than anyone else but would sanctify the alþing each year. The highest title that anyone could hold was that of lögsögumaður (lawspeaker). Every three years the alþing would appoint a lawspeaker who would recite one third of the law each year and act as the chairman of the court. Below the free land owning farmers were farm workers and basically everyone that didn't own land and below them were ómagar (vagrants and invalids) and below them were þrælar (slaves. Mostly from Scotland and Ireland) and outlaws. Slavery slowly faded away after the Christianization. Serfdom didn't really become the law until 1490 when anyone who didn't own or rent land was required to become a farm worker and not allowed to marry or travel freely.
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May 25, 2014 23:10
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FreudianSlippers posted:In the Icelandic Commonwealth the ruling class were chieftains known as goðar... Whoa this is interesting. How did they handle crime and punishment? Like, if someone breaks the law, how does the process of finding them and holding them accountable go down? Maybe that's getting off-topic, I'm just really interested in how justice systems worked before the era of police and jails.
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May 25, 2014 23:25
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Usually crimes were resolved by having the perpetrator paying the victim reparations. More serious crimes could warrant a person being sentanced to fjörbaugsgarður which meant the person had to leave the country for three years and if he didn't he could be killed by anyone without fear of punishment. The most serious punishment was skógganga which was like fjörbaugsgarður except permanent. For example if someone killed one of your lifestock or slaves, stole from you or slandered your name you would have to take it up with the alþing and try to reparations. If you were both þingmenn under the same goði he would probably mediate and it wouldn't have to go any further. However if someone assaulted you,attempted to kill you or killed someone close to you and you managed to get him banished but he didn't leave the country when he was supposed to it would be up to you, and your friends and family, to kill him or be considered cowardly and dishonourable for allowing him to get away with it. Sometimes this sort of thing could erupt into blood feuds which is basically what every other saga is about.
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May 25, 2014 23:47
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FreudianSlippers posted:Usually crimes were resolved by having the perpetrator paying the victim reparations. More serious crimes could warrant a person being sentanced to fjörbaugsgarður which meant the person had to leave the country for three years and if he didn't he could be killed by anyone without fear of punishment. The most serious punishment was skógganga which was like fjörbaugsgarður except permanent. Very cool! Is the fjörbaugsgarður what Erik the Red was sentenced to when he had to leave Iceland and ran around and found Greenland?
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May 26, 2014 01:26
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Didn't the victim have to collect the reparations himself?
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May 26, 2014 01:28
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FreudianSlippers posted:Below the free land owning farmers were farm workers and basically everyone that didn't own land and below them were ómagar (vagrants and invalids) and below them were þrælar (slaves. Mostly from Scotland and Ireland) and outlaws. Slavery slowly faded away after the Christianization. Serfdom didn't really become the law until 1490 when anyone who didn't own or rent land was required to become a farm worker and not allowed to marry or travel freely. This is really interesting! What was the background for the transition from slavery to legally codified serfdom in the 15th century?
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May 26, 2014 02:03
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I should clarify that the commonwealth lasted from 930 to 1264. By the early 13 century the goðorð were all in the hands of six powerful families and had become more bound by geography. In the 1220's these clans started fighting for power and after 40 years of bloody civil war a vassal of the king of Norway won the war and the country became a part of Norway with alþingi becoming more of a court and less of a parliament. When Norway merged with Denmark Iceland became a Danish colony (or province depending on who you ask). For a long time most historians views on this era was that the sinister had Norwegians taken advantage of the chaos to conquer Iceland, this is a product of the 19th century nationalist view of history that was closely related to the independence movement. Nowadays most historians agree that after 40 years of bloodshed most people saw the Norwegian king as a stabilizing force and supported a foreign takeover. It should also be noted that many of the sagas were written in this era. Slavery started to become less common in the 11th century since keeping fellow Catholics as slaves was probably frowned upon by the church. The move towards serfdom was a consequence of the richest farmers wanting to have a steady supply of workers and if the unlanded poor were free to move around they might start forming villages by the sea which would also attract the poor peasants who rented farms from the rich. There was also some moral panic that if left unchecked the poor might start fornicating all over the place. Serfdom didn't really come to an end until the late 19th century when the poor actually started forming villages by the sea. The nationalist historians mostly managed to overlook this and proclaimed that Iceland had been a classless society of farmers from day one and that any and all problems were result of the Danish being dicks. This is still a oddly common view and was even spouted by the prime minister lately. I should mention that the middle ages aren't my field so I might be oversimplifying a bit. FreudianSlippers fucked around with this message at 12:01 on May 27, 2014 |
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May 27, 2014 11:42
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FreudianSlippers posted:I should clarify that the commonwealth lasted from 930 to 1264. By the early 13 century the goðorð were all in the hands of six powerful families and had become more bound by geography. In the 1220's these clans started fighting for power and after 40 years of bloody civil war a vassal of the king of Norway won the war and the country became a part of Norway with alþingi becoming more of a court and less of a parliament. When Norway merged with Denmark Iceland became a Danish colony (or province depending on who you ask). For a long time most historians views on this era was that the sinister had Norwegians taken advantage of the chaos to conquer Iceland, this is a product of the 19th century nationalist view of history that was closely related to the independence movement. Nowadays most historians agree that after 40 years of bloodshed most people saw the Norwegian king as a stabilizing force and supported a foreign takeover. It should also be noted that many of the sagas were written in this era. Are you sure this was serfdom as practiced in continental Europe? For instance I don't think Norway ever really had serfdom, though renters (called 'husmenn' meaning house-men) were very common up until the 20th century (alot of renters immigrated to America and receive free land via the Homestead Act), where people basically rented land on a larger farm for their use and worked on the main farm as payment, though there was never really any permanent legal status binding them to the land. swamp waste posted:Whoa this is interesting. How did they handle crime and punishment? Like, if someone breaks the law, how does the process of finding them and holding them accountable go down? Maybe that's getting off-topic, I'm just really interested in how justice systems worked before the era of police and jails. I know that a common punishment in Norway in the early Middle Ages (which was somewhat similar to Iceland in that that's where the settlers came from) was for someone who had committed a serious crime to be declared an outlaw (the actual word means 'without peace'), any free man could kill an outlaw at will, outlaws were usually marked, branded or mutilated in a way to make them obvious. Local courts called 'ting' usually decided legal matters, drawn from all free landowning men in the area, they also held quite a lot of political influence until the monarchy was more firmly established in the 13th century following the civil war period, a near 100 year period of civil war for the crown. Sometimes guilt or innocense could also be determined by a trial by fire, usually holding a red-hot iron without getting hurt was a sign that God/the gods favored you and your claim was true, alot of pretenders supposedly demonstrated their royal lineage by passing a trial by fire (the root cause of the civil war period was the fact that there really existed no clear succesion law at all, all of a king's sons were kings of the same kingdom, which led to a few problems down the road, also it didn't really matter whether they were legal children or bastards, their claim on the throne was the same). There's an interesting thing about the word 'slave' in that it originates from the fact that during the Viking Age so many Slavic peoples were enslaved by Norse raiders and either taken back to Scandinavia as thralls (who were unfree with the perk that their children were free) or sold to Jewish and Arab slave traders who then sold them throughout the Islamic Mediterranean, 'slavs' virtually became synonymous with 'slave' who earlier were known by terms derived from the latin 'servus', in English I think this is serf, though the two words eventually came to mean different things. Also Muslim states effectively distinguished between three kinds of slaves; saqaliba, abid and mamluks. saqaliba were slavic slaves and were very often women who were either servants or concubines, abid were black slaves, of whom the women were mostly servants and the men were either eunuchs (by the 16th century or so I think nearly all black eunuchs were 'made' in a monastery in Upper Egypt I think, black eunuchs always had everything cut off, while white eunuchs usually only lost their balls) or guardsmen/soldiers, and the mamluks were high status white slaves (usually Turkish or Caucasian, but sometime Greeks and other Europeans as well) who were elite cavalrymen, officers and governors. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Jun 3, 2014 |
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Jun 3, 2014 22:49
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Randarkman posted:There's an interesting thing about the word 'slave' in that it originates from the fact that during the Viking Age so many Slavic peoples were enslaved by Norse raiders and either taken back to Scandinavia as thralls (who were unfree with the perk that their children were free) or sold to Jewish and Arab slave traders who then sold them throughout the Islamic Mediterranean, 'slavs' virtually became synonymous with 'slave' I hope I'm not opening a can of worms here but I thought the connection between Slavs and the word "slave" was pretty hotly debated?
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Jun 4, 2014 02:03
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Randarkman posted:Are you sure this was serfdom as practiced in continental Europe? For instance I don't think Norway ever really had serfdom, though renters (called 'husmenn' meaning house-men) were very common up until the 20th century (alot of renters immigrated to America and receive free land via the Homestead Act), where people basically rented land on a larger farm for their use and worked on the main farm as payment, though there was never really any permanent legal status binding them to the land. I should have been more clear that this was all in Iceland which was a bit strange and didn't really fit in with the rest of Europe possibly due to it being a really isolated barely habitable wasteland. For a long time it was faster to take a boat from eastern Iceland to Copenhagen and then another from Copenhagen to western Iceland than to try to travel by land.
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Jun 4, 2014 02:05
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Etymologically? No, it's pretty open and shut. The cute little story to explain it and the historiography/if there ever were that many Slavic slaves? 
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Jun 4, 2014 02:05
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