Killing and Being Killed

A volume of essays arising from a conference held in Mainz in 2015, this collection consists of the editor’s brief introduction and ten studies that reflect upon the question of how medieval fighters recounted their experiences (either as, or to, chroniclers) and in particular how bodily condition and conditioning operated in the medieval theatre of warfare. These discussions reflect Jörg Rogge’s own interest, and distinguished track record, in social and cultural history (including editing another volume on accounts of warfare from historical and literary perspectives), but the answers that contributors find to these two questions are dependent upon the period and context, and are rather patchy. Predictably enough, most of the essays use materials dating from 1200 and after, when writers focused in earnest upon an emergent ‘knightly’ culture and accounts of warfare drew upon the tropes of literary culture to elaborate on single combats, deeds of honour and (conversely) atrocities perpetrated by the opposing forces. The two exceptions, Guido Berndt’s thoughtful piece on how Gothic war leaders gained and maintained positions of leadership, and Bogdan-Petrou Maleon’s study of the ebb and flow of capital and corporal punishment in Byzantium from the fourth to the eighth centuries, nonetheless reveal the ways in which the right to inflict violence on rebel and enemy bodies operated as a core element of any claim to rule

Adversary · Aesthetics · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Battle · Context (archaeology · Honour · Literature · Period (music · Political science · Punishment (psychology · Byzantine Studies and History · Classics · Eurasian Exchange Networks · Historical and Religious Studies of Rome · History · Law · Psychology