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IMC 2013: Sessions

Session 1518: Martial Pleasures?: Jousting, Shooting, and Fencing in Late Medieval Culture

Thursday 4 July 2013, 09.00-10.30

Organiser:Uwe Israel, Lehrstuhl für Mittelalterliche Geschichte, Technische Universität, Dresden
Moderator/Chair:Uwe Israel, Lehrstuhl für Mittelalterliche Geschichte, Technische Universität, Dresden
Paper 1518-aJousting Rules!: Tournaments and the Medici's Struggle for Fitness in 15th-Century Florence
(Language: English)
Christian Jaser, Institut für Geschichtswissenschaften, Humboldt-Universität, Berlin
Index terms: Local History, Military History, Politics and Diplomacy, Social History
Paper 1518-bShooting Contests in Upper Germany in the 15th Century: Martial Pleasures without Military Purposes
(Language: English)
Jean-Dominique Delle Luche, Groupe d'Anthropologie Historique de l'Occident Médiéval (GAHOM), Centre de Recherches Historiques, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris
Index terms: Local History, Military History, Social History
Paper 1518-cFor Money, Blood, or Entertainment: The Fencing Schools in the Late Middle Ages
(Language: English)
Daniel Jaquet, Unité d'histoire Médiévale, Université de Genève
Index terms: Local History, Military History, Social History
Abstract

At the interface between military ethic, civic self-fashioning, and urban sport cultures, the martial practices of jousting, shooting, and fencing have been perceived as rather ambivalent phenomena of late medieval urban history. Based on examples from Upper Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, this session will discuss the role pleasure played at these competitive performances of martial skills, staged as spectacular and festive urban entertainments and highly charged with messages of status, gender, honor, and civic identity. In this context, such events could be interpreted as a specific blending of leisure and the delicate task of representing oneself, one’s family, peer group, and urban community in an appropriate way.