Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 6 - 2023 i Medieval World Culture & Conflict Magazine

King Louis IX of France (r. 1226-1270) was a fascinating figure of the Middle Ages. During his long reign - guided initially by his remarkable mother Blanche of Castile - Louis instituted new reforms, expanded his kingdom, nurtured diplomatic relations at home and abroad, led two crusades, fervently promoted the Christian faith, and was a keen patron of the arts. Not all of his endeavors were successful, but each contributed to his growing reputation as "the most Christian king". The papacy even formally canonized him as a saint in 1297 - the only such honor bestowed upon a French ruler. King, crusader, patron, and saint, Louis IX lived a full life marked by notable cultural achievements and devastating conflicts. Read all about Louis in this beautifully illustrated issue, featuring expert…

To honour the relics from Byzantium, Louis, with the support and guidance of his mother Blanche of Castile, built a new chapel in the royal palace on the Ile de la Cité, that small island in the middle of the Seine at the heart of the city home to both the king's palace and the bishop's cathedral. The new chapel, called the Sainte-Chapelle, replaced an older chapel dedicated to Saint Nicholas and became the centre of the extraordinary collection of relics - a sign, they said, of Christ's great love for the French kingdom and her kings, and a mark that France was a kind of new Holy Land. The Sainte-Chapelle, consecrated in 1248, is an utter triumph of the Gothic style. It is a two-level chapel with direct access…

In 1245, Pope Innocent IV gathered leading clerics from across the Catholic Church at the First Council of Lyons. They had many matters to discuss, but these included the rising Mongol threat. There had been a time, many years earlier, when some commentators had speculated that the Mongols’ armies were actually the forces of Prester John, a friendly Christian ruler who – so legend reported -ruled over the distant Indies. Even so, the Mongol invasion of Hungary and Poland in 1241, coupled with the troubled reports of many emissaries warning of the sheer scale of the Mongol threat, had killed off these hopes. The main challenge now was to devise a strategy to stave off disaster. To this end, the council decided to send out a series of missions to…

THE MOTHER OF LOUIS IX lanche of Castile proved a remarkable queen regent of France during the minority of Louis IX from 1226 to 1234, and then again during Louis IX’s crusade between 1248 and Blanche’s death in 1252. Blanche was arguably the most successful woman ruler of the Middle Ages, and she was a formidable matriarch for Louis IX and his siblings. Blanche of Castile was born in 1188, daughter of King Alfonso VIII of Castile and his queen, Eleanor of England. Her maternal grandparents were King Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine; her maternal uncles were Richard the Lionheart and King John. In 1200, she was married to Louis, the heir to the French throne. Her marriage was key to a treaty negotiated by her uncles,…

The Bible (especially the Latin Vulgate version) referred to the dragon as a personification of evil; no wonder that many saints were said to have conquered such beasts. Most importantly, the Apocalyptic dragon was supposed to have been beaten by the archangel Michael. In the twelfth chapter of the Book of Revelation, a war breaks out in heaven between Michael and the Dragon, identified as "that old Serpent, called the Devil, and Satan" (Revelation 12:9). Winged and often armoured, Saint Michael was usually depicted as killing the dragon. However, a knight without wings, fighting a dragon on horseback, is usually not Michael, but Saint George. His cult flourished at the time of Crusades, and that is when his legend was enriched by the motif of killing a dragon. The most…

CHICKEN PUDDING ANYONE? Flip through a medieval cookbook and you certainly will find a recipe for blanc manger, which means ‘white dish’ or ‘white food’. The dish was so named because all its ingredients were white. The basic ingredients that appear in most recipes are rice, blanched almonds, sugar, and chicken breast or capon (castrated rooster). During Lent, the chicken is absent from the dish. Medieval chefs were very creative with the dish in terms of flavours, structure, decoration, and even colour. Off-white In addition to sugar, ginger is often used as seasoning, which is also light in colour. Cinnamon, grains of paradise, and cloves, for example, were also cooked with the rice. To keep the dish white, cooks used the spices whole and removed them after cooking. But the…

Fantastic beasts on medieval strap end A silver gilt strap end decorated with fantastic beasts on either side has been discovered in Hampshire, England. Dating to the fourteenth century, it is one of 45,581 archaeological finds recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) in 2021. On one side is depicted a birdlike animal with a long neck and a human face, with the other side showing a doglike animal. Such objects would have adorned the ends of medieval belts (protecting the leather or textile strap), but this one is particularly special since it is ornately decorated, perhaps belonging to someone of some status, such as a merchant. The item was found by Barry Cole while metal-detecting. The Hampshire Cultural Trust hopes to acquire the strap end so that it can…

THE IMJIN WAR AT SEA, 1592-1598 Toyotomi Hideyoshi's campaign to bring Japan's warlords under his rule concluded in 1590 with his defeat of the Hojo clan at Odawara. With his wars at an end, he suddenly required an outlet for samurai aggression if he were to have any chance to solidify his hold over a unified Japan. An invasion of China, traversing tiny Joseon, was just what he needed both to buy time and create conquered lands, which he could then dispense to loyal retainers. Whether or not Hideyoshi really expected Joseon to defend itself remains difficult to ascertain, but it appears unlikely he considered such resistance an obstacle to his plan. It is worth noting that Hideyoshi had never before experienced naval warfare. The kingdom of Joseon had been…

ORIGINS & EARLY DEVELOPMENT Being seen on the battlefield was important long before the development of heraldry, and shields have always been an obvious vehicle for displaying that identity. The ancient Greeks bore shields with both collective and individual emblems, whilst the units of the Roman army carried a range of designs that, certainly from the late Roman period onward, distinguished them from each other. Pre-heraldic display For the early Middle Ages, we have little evidence for what, if any, system lay behind the decoration warriors bore on their shields. Occasional references to Norse shields being red, for example, should not lead to the conclusion that all Norse shields were red, or even that there was a conscious decision to make them so. The Bayeux Tapestry may give us an…

LOUIS’ SEVENTH CRUSADE Despite the compelling narrative that Louis IX of France decided spontaneously to take the cross after rebounding from a grave illness in December 1244, an understanding of the arc of his reign strongly indicates that he had already, for the five years preceding his near-death experience, intended to lead a crusade to the Levant to retake Jerusalem from the Muslims. Rather than wait months for a papal legate, Louis summoned William of Auvergne, the Bishop of Paris, to his chambers so he could take the cross. The French king had the blood of crusading ancestors coursing through his veins. His great-grandfather Louis VII had been one of the leaders of the Second Crusade, his grandfather Philip II had been one of the leaders of the Third Crusade,…

POWERFUL WOMEN OF THE CAPETIAN COURT Louis IX was only twelve when his father, Louis VIII, died in 1226. It was up to his mother, Blanche of Castile, to preserve his throne through a tumultuous period of baronial rebellion. With a boy king and a female guardian, might it be possible to shake off the heavy hand of royal control? Through a combination of blunt force, deft negotiation, and subtle manipulation of her barons, Blanche had restored order and quelled any doubts about the crown's authority by the time she arranged Louis IX's marriage in 1234. Marguerite of Provence The bride, Marguerite, was the oldest child of the count and countess of Provence. She was probably thirteen in 1234; her husband was twenty. Although later hagiographers would praise Louis’ marital…

THE REAL ‘HOUSE OF THE DRAGON’ The earliest known text that recounts the story of the Wawel Dragon is found in the Historia Polonica - a Latin chronicle of Poland's history, starting from legends dating to ancient and early medieval times – written by Wincenty Kadłubek (ca. 1150–1223). Wincenty was one of the early bishops of Cracow. He was a Cistercian, a lawyer, and a historian, who most likely studied in Paris and Bologna. He was a man of great erudition, and his broad knowledge of medieval and classical literature, as well as Roman and Canon law, was evident in his writings. The story of the Wawel Dragon was rooted most likely in some local folk tale related to pagan Slavic beliefs about an archaic chthonic creature of chaos and…

GLASGOW’S MEDIEVAL CATHEDRAL Glasgow Cathedral stands as the most complete medieval cathedral on the Scottish mainland, having survived the Reformation almost intact. Visitors entering via the door on the south wall of the nave have a side view of a building that at 87 metres in length does not appear particularly large in comparison with other cathedrals in the British Isles. However, the true extent of the cathedral is best appreciated when viewed from the adjacent graveyard (the Necropolis). From there, the depth of the east end makes an immediate impact. Bishop Bondington's programme of expansion from 1233 onward envisaged a much longer east limb, but this presented a challenge as the ground sloped steeply downward toward the Molendinar burn (stream). The solution was to create an extended choir over…

THE EQUIPMENT AND TACTICS OF WALLACHIAN SOLDIERS Nicolaescu put all his Wallachian soldiers in shiny, heavy plate armour, letting them fight battles of epic proportions. The following considerations of Wallachia’s fighters are not exhaustive but take into account Vlad III Dracula’s military activities between 1448 and 1476. Dracula’s men displayed Western and Central European aesthetics adapted to mobile warfare tactics. The principality of Wallachia, like Moldavia to the northeast, developed at the crossroads of different traditions: Latin Central and Western Europe, Byzantine Southeastern Europe and Western Anatolia, and the Mongol world that dominated the broad steppes between modern Republic of Moldova and China. Wallachia thus served as a war and buffer zone where powerful actors regulated their disputes. Wallachian elites also regularly clashed with each other for power and resources.…

The Sainte-Chapelle and the Construction of Sacral Monarchy By Meredith Cohen Cambridge University Press, 2014 ISBN: 978-1107025578 The Making of Saint Louis: Kingship, Sanctity, and Crusade in the Later Middle Ages By M. Cecilia Gaposchkin Cornell University Press, 2008 ISBN: 978-0801476259 Louis: The French Prince Who Invaded England By Catherine Hanley Yale University Press, 2016 ISBN: 978-0300217452 Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade: A Study In Rulership By William Chester Jordan Princeton University Press, 2016 (reprint) ISBN: 978-0691635453 Isabelle Of France: Capetian Sanctity and Franciscan Identity in the Thirteenth Century By Sean L. Field University of Notre Dame Press, 2006 ISBN: 978-0268206345 Blanche of Castile, Queen of France By Lindy Grant Yale University Press, 2016 ISBN: 978-0300219265 Men at the Center: Redemptive Governance under Louis IX By William…

“THE MOST CHRISTIAN KING” Louis IX, who came to the throne twelve years later, was heir to these developments, and he reigned for the better part of half a century, during the most vibrant decades of the thirteenth century. His reign, initially aided by the regency of his formidable mother Blanche of Castile (d. 1252), oversaw the growth of the kingdom, the flourishing of the University of Paris, the glories of high Gothic art and architecture, and the development of newly energizing religious ideals. Moreover, although he led two disastrous crusades, his leadership as a zealous warrior for "the cause of Christ" only enhanced his reputation as an ideal Christian king. When he died in 1270, he was in many ways the great moral authority of the West - so…

THE TIDES OF EURASIAN WAR AND DIPLOMACY The most important development shaping the region at this time was the rapid expansion of the Mongol Empire. In this environment, many families and communities fled West, seeking a safe haven. Among these were many Turkmen nomads whose growing numbers posed a threat to the few remaining powers still maintaining their independence. These included the Crusader States; territories established either during the First Crusade (1097–1099) or in its immediate aftermath. When Louis IX arrived on Cyprus, he learned that the northernmost of these states – the principality of Antioch – was engaged in such a bitter struggle with neighbouring Turkmen groups that he felt obliged to despatch a contingent of crossbowmen to buttress its defences. The really big question, however, hovering over the…

Upon Louis’ death in 1270, his second son with Marguerite of Provence – Philip III “the Bold” (1 May 1245–5 October 1285) – took the throne. Philip had accompanied his father on the Eighth Crusade and was proclaimed king in Tunis, soon after Louis’ death. The following year, he was anointed king at Reims Cathedral on 15 August 1271. Philip was successful in continuing his father’s efforts and local policies, at least during the first half of his reign. His attack on the kingdom of Aragon in 1285 failed, however, resulting in great losses for the French army and the king’s deteriorating health. He died on 5 October 1285 while returning from this defeat. His two marriages, to Isabella of Aragon (in 1262) and then to Maria of Brabant (in…

In the fourteenth century, Cracow Cathedral gained a crucial political role as a place of both royal coronations and burials. First, two tombs of Polish kings of the Piast dynasty, Ladislaus the Short (d. 1333) and his son Casimir III the Great (d. 1370), were commissioned in the Gothic cathedral by their respective successors. However, the founder of the new Jagiellonian dynasty, Ladislaus Jogaila (Władysław Jagiełło; d. 1434), had his own tomb created while he was still alive. The tomb is decorated with carefully designed political motifs (including coats of arms of the regions of the kingdom ruled by Jagiełło), and a dragon under the king's feet. Perhaps it is worth noticing that King Ladislaus was a member of the Order of the Dragon, a monarchical chivalric order founded in…

THE ENGLISH CAMPAIGNS OF 1014 Æthelred returned from exile and executed a stunning comeback: he personally led a campaign to re-conquer England, expelling Cnut the Great’s Viking army in Lindsey. Scandinavian sagas credit Æthelred with two more victories at this time: a recapture of London and a great victory at a place called Ringmere Heath, both with the help of Olaf Haraldsson. A military life Contrary to his modern reputation, Æthelred closely followed the military practices that had been established by the aggressive English kings of the tenth century. He mirrored Edgar and Eadred by harrying within his own kingdom, attacking Rochester in 986. ÆAthelred plundered the Norse-influenced Kingdom of Strathclyde in 1000, just like Edmund had done in 946. Æthelred’s naval attacks on the Isle of Man and Normandy…

Vlad III Dracula’s main night attacks against the Ottoman camp in 1462 (on June 16/17 and 22/23, respectively) were meant to be as stealthy as possible. They required a close engagement of the enemy ranks, and so the composition of the Wallachian troops and the defensive equipment was slightly different than usual. Vlad must have considered an additional layer of defensive protection to avoid cutting-edged arms and polearms. The soldiers likely covered their gambesons with chainmail, brigandines, or cuirasses. Neither would have worn metal plates since they generated friction and therefore noise. Like his men, Vlad was mounted on a warhorse whose chest was protected with layers of some padded textile and reinforced with small steel sheets. A celata without a visor and of South German production covered his head.…