- Understanding the context
• "Odd that they would trample crops they depended on," said the man who sold us the schoolbook with this picture...
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If you have clicked in from "Tourism that questions", this is part of a visit to the Renaissance Museum, where many works glamorize violence.
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•Fief
 - "Count Geoffroys' great pleasure is hunting. In chasing wild animals he destroys harvests."
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Nobles did not (theoretically) trample crops peasants needed to survive or pay their tax - they did trample peasant surplus destined to markets that, from the 11th century, sprang up almost everywhere. Destroying income that they did not control was one way aristocrats contained a class whose interests opposed their own...
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Since they benefitted from the comforts and luxuries their potential challengers made possible, nobles wished to keep them "in their little corner", as one lord put it, not annihilate them: in short, maintain the status quo.
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•So lords would raid each other's lands...
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 - "Count Geoffroy's main occupation is war. He often fights against neighboring lords."
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...that is, raid each others' peasants. These ritualized campaigns were an extension of hunting, in which not many people were hurt and even the peasants found shelter in the lord's castle (which justified his living off their labor).
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As well: Horses, armor, elaborate shields etc. weren't cheap and being obliged to acquire them siphoned off aristocrats' gains as well as peasants'. Wars thus had the effect of keeping everyone's wealth within bounds.
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But what could keep destruction from getting out of hand? |
- That's where the museum come in. Many of its works reveal that its effects were restrained in practice
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 - Museum tapestry (detail)
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Take these magnificent steeds. They display power and allow showing off. They help neutralize potentially dangerous wealth. Being mounted sets nobles apart from commoners and horsemen can usually dominate people who are on foot.
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But in combat, don't these trappings get in the way? And why do chronicles state that when knights are determined on victory, they often dismount and fight on foot?
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We examine works as a detective would.
- These suggestions explain...
•The practical reasons for an ideology of martial valor, and so...
• ...its longevity, for it lasted as long as nobles' prestige did |
•Does that throw light on aberrations of World War 1...
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 - French patriotic publication, April 1915
How else account for bullet-attracting red trousers, no helmets, believing that "élan" would overcome barbed wire and machine guns (until mutiny affected half of the French infantry in 1917)?
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•...and on the carnage that brought on the 20th-century's calamities?
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Back to the Renaissance: please CLICK
•Top of page
•Introduction
•Museum
•Fief
