Killing and Being Killed: Bodies in Battle. Perspectives on Fighters in the Middle Ages ed. by Jörge Rogge (review)

Violence fascinates and killing is standard fare in virtually all contemporary media, and a prominent feature in literature from the Bible right on down to the sources under consideration in this book. In it, Guido Berndt points out that violence contributes to a sense of community and can function as a form of identification (p. 19). However, while there is plenty of information about the nature of medieval combat, there is little about how war affected the medieval warrior. How did fighters feel? We know almost nothing about the psychological effects of medieval combat. Fortitude is a virtue that sits between fear and courage. How is it assessed? Braccio da Montone was killed in 1424 and though his body perished, one source insisted that 'he felt undefeated in his soul' (p. 184). Individuals and indeed entire geographical areas were profoundly shaped by war, and this volume attempts to explicate the claim. Its chapters are based on papers delivered at a conference convened at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz in 2015.

The theme is built around the experiences of fighters, and a full range of battle images emerge. These include evidence and argument that scars and injuries may indicate a signature of courage. These communities of violence (Gewaltgemeinschaften) provide considerable scope for research. The display of prisoners in postures of humiliation or the display of severed heads indicate winners and losers. Mutilation is symbolic: the amputation of limbs, genitals, noses, and tongues became de rigueur at different times. The Byzantine emperor Constantine V in 763 ordered the bodily destruction of a captive including the amputation of arms and legs, and a pre-mortem dissection from the genitals to the chest. Ritualized violence is also apparent and in some instances there were specific symbolic meanings associated with wounds and the deployment of violence. Injuries to the back were dishonourable, whilst those to the chest or face were seen as honourable.

There were rules too. We hear of just war theory, and canon law mandated the categories of people who should be considered non-combatants ineligible for targeting. Routine violation suggests that these mandates and suggestions of restraint, as reflected in chronicles, are probably rhetorical, rather than real. Some fighters became remorseful and dedicated the reminder of their natural lives to penance. Occasionally, we read of ex-warriors deploring careers of violence and asserting that the lives of knights were passports to hell.

The sources are problematic. Fight books reflected ideals, not realities, as many of the chroniclers and writers were not combatants. Many also wrote well after the events. Some of the accounts are exercises in art, rather than history. When writers defined acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, or engaged in representations of honour, it is prudent to query their understanding with respect to the ethics of combatants. Another consideration is the extent to which the reader should accept at face value the nature and extent of recorded atrocities. Were they true and factual, or only true, and by what criteria? When Henry Knighton referred to atrocities occurred a century earlier, surely caution should be exercised.

Savagery and patterns of brutality, and even attitudes about such matters, may not be well served by relying on certain records. What are we to make of the fate of Elias the Clerk who was, in 1317, 'displayed in death with his severed head protruding from his anus' (pp. 214–15)? The return of mutilated warriors has been interpreted by some scholars as examples of walking propaganda, albeit a two-edged advertising sword.

We also encounter fleeting references to women in war in the early fourteenth century (both in the sources and in these essays), but these glimpses are too brief to be useful. The uses of theoretical approaches like feminism are interesting but they do not serve to answer historical questions.

Finally...