In the Manner of the Franks: Hunting, Kingship, and Masculinity in Early Medieval Europe (The Middle Ages) - Hardcover

Goldberg, Eric J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0812252357 ISBN 13: 9780812252354

Verlag: UNIV OF PENNSYLVANIA PR, 2020

Inhaltsangabe

Featuring more than sixty illustrations, In the Manner of the Franks traces the long history of early medieval hunting from the fourth through the tenth centuries. Eric J. Goldberg focuses chiefly on elite men and the changing role that hunting played in articulating kingship, status, and manhood in the post-Roman world.

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Eric J. Goldberg is Associate Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Introduction

After many weeks of travel, Charlemagne's ambassadors arrived at the court of the caliph Harun al-Rashid. Charlemagne had dispatched his envoys over land and sea to renew his father's alliance between the Frankish and Muslim empires, and as diplomatic protocol required, the ruler of the Franks sent his representatives with costly gifts: fast horses, bright fabrics, and fierce hunting dogs. As the wealthiest ruler in the world, the caliph was only mildly impressed by the horses and textiles, yet he did take a special interest in the Frankish dogs, and he inquired as to what animals they were good for hunting. Charlemagne's ambassadors proudly responded that they would tear to pieces any beast on which they were set. The caliph replied dubiously, "Only time will tell." As chance would have it, the next day it was reported to Harun that a lion was assailing his subjects nearby. He immediately called for the visiting Franks and their dogs, and they set out quickly on horseback. When they came upon the lion, the Frankish dogs encircled the menacing beast, and Charlemagne's envoys moved in, quickly slaying it with their swords. Seeing the skill and courage of the Frankish hunters, the caliph at last believed the rumors he had heard about the emperor in far-off Europe. He proclaimed, "Now I know that the things I have heard about my brother Charlemagne are true: that through constant hunting and exercising his body and mind with untiring energy, he has grown accustomed to conquering everything under heaven!"

As is often the case with early medieval hunting stories, we cannot know if this tale about Charlemagne's ambassadors slaying a lion in Mesopotamia is based on an actual historical event or was simply made up. The anecdote comes from the pen of a St.-Gall monk named Notker, who had a flair for inventing vivid stories to entertain his intended reader, Charlemagne's great-grandson Charles the Fat. Nevertheless, the story is significant because it captures essential connections between hunting, masculinity, and power in the early Middle Ages. The caliph's proclamation about Charlemagne at the end of the tale encapsulates two prevalent interpretations of hunting in Notker's day: that it was a badge of the Franks' vigorous manhood ("exercising his body and mind with untiring energy") and that it was a symbol of Carolingian kingship and empire ("conquering everything under heaven"). Charlemagne's biographer Einhard likewise associated hunting with Frankish kingship and manhood when he observed that Charlemagne and his sons were outstanding hunters more Francorum, "in the manner of the Franks." Einhard's phrase "in the manner of the Franks" expressed the political ideology that skill at hunting was a defining characteristic of the Carolingian royal family and of the Frankish nobility at large. As Einhard summed up with pride, "There is hardly another people to be found on earth who can equal the Franks in this art."

This book seeks to understand why authors like Einhard and Notker believed there were important connections between hunting, kingship, and masculinity in early medieval Europe. To answer this question, I trace the dynamic history of hunting from the late Roman empire, through the eras of the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties, up to the death of the last Carolingian king, Louis V—fittingly, in a hunting accident—in 987. I argue that hunting played a fundamental role in the creation of aristocratic status and manhood throughout these centuries. Moreover, I demonstrate how hunting experienced a number of significant developments during this era that reflected and shaped larger changes in politics and society. Not only did cynegetic techniques, law, and geography evolve across the centuries, but the Carolingians also transformed the activity into a symbol of Frankish kingship and political identity. This connection between hunting, kingship, and Frankishness first emerged under Charlemagne (768-814), reached its highpoint under his heir Louis the Pious (814-840), and continued under Louis's sons. Carolingian royal hunting then experienced a long period of transformation during the later ninth and tenth centuries until Louis V's death. In the end, the Carolingians' emphasis on the hunt as a badge of royal power and Frankish identity endured long after the end of their dynasty.

In this study I define "hunting" broadly as all methods of capturing or killing wild animals and birds. By doing so, I follow the lead of one early medieval author who characterized hunting as any technique for slaying or catching game "with practice, skill, and cunning." Geographically I focus on the lands of western Europe that became the core regions of the Carolingian empire (Gaul, Germany, and Italy), with occasional glances further afield to Byzantium, the 'Abbasid caliphate, Anglo-Saxon Britain, and the Scandinavian and Slavic worlds. While previous studies of medieval hunting have tended to focus on techniques and law, I seek to understand the larger political, cultural, and ideological meanings of the chase in the context of early medieval society. I contend that hunting played a vital yet little-understood role in the social construction of political power, noble status, and elite manhood in this formative period of European history. Hunting, in other words, contributed to the creation of Europe itself.

Approaches to Early Medieval Hunting

The prevalent view of hunting in the early Middle Ages is that it was somehow more primitive, militaristic, and "Germanic" than in later periods. This perspective goes back to the Enlightenment, when Edward Gibbon characterized hunting by the "German conquerors" as a destructive force that undermined Roman peace, law, and social order. Through the usurpation of public lands to create private forests, Gibbon argued, the barbarians oppressed the civilized inhabitants of Roman Gaul and drove the large-scale reversion of productive agriculture to primeval wilderness. The sociologist Norbert Elias contributed to this view through his influential work on the formation of court societies and what he called the "civilizing process." Elias was interested in the historical development of restrained codes of courtly behavior that compelled aristocrats to stifle violent impulses and behave according to rules of refined etiquette. Only in the later Middle Ages and early modern era, Elias believed, did European monarchs become strong enough to curb aristocratic violence through what he termed the "courtierization of warriors." As part of his model, Elias argued that it was not until the post-medieval era that hunting emerged as a civilized "sport," by which he meant an organized group activity centered on competition, physical exertion, and "rules which define the permitted limits of violence." In contrast, Elias believed that hunting in the earlier medieval centuries was simpler, more violent and unregulated, and focused on the "real pleasures, the pleasures of killing and eating."

Early medieval historians have long discredited such antiquated views of the "Dark Ages." Nevertheless, these outdated notions endure in modern scholarship on the history of hunting. In the only monograph dedicated exclusively to early medieval hunting (published in 1940), Kurt Lindner described this period as one of secondary importance for the overall history of the subject. For Lindner, the Merovingian and Carolingian eras provided only the rough-hewn foundations for "all the beauty and sublimity that was the peculiar characteristic of late medieval hunting in its Golden Age." More recent scholarship on medieval hunting accepts Lindner's interpretation. In his important history of hunting from prehistoric times to the present, Werner Rösener posed the question, "In which age and under what circumstances did the 'noble art of the chase' evolve out of the wild slaying of...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: UNIV OF PENNSYLVANIA PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2020
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0812252357
• ISBN 13: 9780812252354
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 384
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar