Studies on Horses and Their Effects on Medieval Societies Explorations in Medieval Culture

About this book

Saying that horses shaped the medieval world – and the way we see it today – is hardly an exaggeration. Why else do we imagine a medieval knight – or a nomadic warrior – on horseback? Why do we use such metaphors as "unbridled" or "bearing a yoke" in our daily language? Studies of medieval horses and horsemanship are increasingly popular, but they often focus on a single aspect of equestrianism or a single culture. In Echoing Hooves, you will find information about both elite and humble working equines, about the ideology and practicalities of medieval horsemanship across different countries, from Iceland to China.

Contents

Acknowledgments
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors

Introduction: Of Horses and Humans in the Medieval World / Anastasija Ropa

Part 1: Socially Formative Horses
1 Horses as Status Indicators in Wolfram’s Parzival / Anna-Lena Lange
2 The Role of the Horse in Tangut Society / Romain Lefebvre
3 “Hrafn ok Sleipnir, hestar ágætir”: Horses of the Medieval North / Rebecca Henderson
4 City of the Cavalrymen and House of the Rider: ‘Landscaped Hippodromes’ and Stable-Palaces in Mamluk Cairo / Agnès Carayon

Part 2: Literary Horses
5 Travel in the Middle English ‘Matter of England’ Romances, and the Changing Significations of Horses and Horsemanship / John C. Ford
6 Information of Middle Byzantine Hagiographical Texts about Equids / Alexia-Foteini Stamouli
7 Dead Horses in Arthurian Romance (and Beyond) / Luise Borek
8 Horse Descriptions in the Unedited Prose Rinaldo da Montalbano (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana MS Pluteus 42, codex 37) / Gloria Allaire

Part 3: Martial Horses
9 Vegetius, Arrian and the Battlefield Cavalry Formations of Medieval Europe / Jürg Gassmann
10 Hunting, Jousting, and Fighting on Horseback according to King João I and King Duarte of Portugal / Ana Maria S.A. Rodrigues
11 The Typology of Horses in Burgundian Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century / Loïs Forster

Part 4: The Hardware of the Horse – Real and Symbolic
12 The Origin of the Horse Collar / Gail Brownrigg
13 Get off your High Horse: An Examination of Changes in Lorinery and Equitation in the Irish Early Medieval Period AD 400 to 700 / Rena Maguire
14 Unbridled Horses and Knights Errant / Gavina Cherchi

Conclusion: Gendering Horse Riders in Medieval Romance and Modern Racing Media / Anastasija Ropa

Select Bibliography
Index

Customer Reviews

Biography

Anastasija Ropa, PhD (2014), Bangor University, is a senior researcher at the Latvian Academy of Sport Education. She has published extensively on aspects of medieval horse history and horsemanship, including the monograph Practical Horsemanship in Medieval Arthurian Romance (Trivent Medieval, 2019).

Timothy Dawson, PhD (2003), University of New England, is a UK-based independent scholar and founder of Levantia. He has authored numerous academic publications on medieval Byzantium, the history of horsemanship and cavalry and various aspects of daily life in Europe and the Near East.


Contributors:
- Gloria Allaire
- Luise Borek
- Gail Brownrigg
- Agnès Carayon
- Gavina Cherchi
- John C. Ford
- Loïs Forster
- Jürg Gassmann
- Rebecca Henderson
- Anna-Lena Lange
- Romain Lefebvre
- Rena Maguire
- Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues
- Alexia-Foteini Stamouli