MEDIEVAL SOCIETY Volume 2

MEDIEVAL SOCIETY Volume 2 Dancing Lights Press Join our community at DancingLightsPress.com Follow us on Twitter @LightsPress SampleThe bearer of this document has the express file written permission of the publisher to make copies for personal use. Medieval Society is based upon works in the public domain. Introduction and commentary copyright 2021 Berin Kinsman. All rights reserved. This is version 1.0 of this document. Special Thanks Denise Webster, Josephine Lawson, Agnes Foster, Homer Taylor, Jean Watson, Benjamin Silva, Roger Franklin, Dave Thompson, Keith Ferguson, Sidney Becker, Hugo Turner, Louis Williams, Lorene Alexander, Julio Meyer, Marguerite Townsend, Cameron Price, Kathleen Drake, Eunice Cobb, Roy Gray, Rachael Buchanan, Ignacio Ross, Santos McCormick, Javier Moss, Winston McKinney, Estelle Wolfe, Rudolph Hoffman, Grace Frank, Yolanda Burgess, Elias Barber, Hannah Cooper, Michelle Campbell, Ernesto Perry, Marco Lane, Nicholas Simmons, Melissa Joseph, Vicky Gibbs, Kara Walton, Dewey Hogan, Casey Carter, Bobby Cook, Shawn Reed, Nichole Sutton, Edgar Gardner, Jason Herrera, Kristopher Stephens, Armando Steele, Joshua Ortega, Ginger Hines, Jacob Jensen, Oliver Maldonado. They know why, and that’s what matters. Sample file CONTENTS INTRODUCTION.................................................1 THE BRAVE MAN SLOWLY WISE..........................3 ABAELARD AND HELOÏSE.................................38 WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE.....................77 YOU SHALL WELCOME ME................................89 ABOUT DANCING LIGHTS PRESS.......................91 Sample file Sample file INTRODUCTION Medieval Society is a system-agnostic sourcebook for any historical or fantasy game. It presents a look at the cultural influences at the time when feudalism was on the rise. The social hierarchy brought with it knights, poetry, and romanticism while also codifying a caste system. Based on the academic work of Henry Osborn Taylor, it focuses on the effect of these social changes on scholarship and culture, for better or worse, with both a sympathetic eye toward the people of the time, and a critical judgment that can only be gained in retrospect. The result is a look at the period that goes beyond the lineages of kings and chronicles of various wars. This volume is filled with information that can be mined for worldbuilding details usable in your own settings. There are colorful characters that can be adapted as villains and non-player characters. Story hooks abound, either as background details for your game world, or as adventure seeds for player characters to pursue. While it has become less prevalent over time, medievalism was a heavy component of early tabletop roleplaying games. You could drag in elements of Moorcock’s Melnibone, Lieber’s Lankhmar, Tolkien’s Middle Earth, Asian and Middle Eastern cultures, anything you wanted, but they’d all end up assimilated and patched over the default, baseline Samplesetting of some fictional Medieval Europe. There filehas been justifiable criticism of this in the decades since, but it can’t be 1 denied that the Middle Ages were a powerful influence on D&D and nearly all tabletop fantasy for a long time. In presenting the Medieval Reference series, my goal is to get people to look beyond official gaming material for inspiration. There is a wealth of ideas to be found in history, biographies, and older fiction from before the tabletop roleplaying game era that is waiting to be tapped. My hope is that this book with fire up your imagination, and help you to discover new possibilities. Enjoy! Berin Kinsman Dancing Lights Press Sample file 2 THE BRAVE MAN SLOWLY WISE Henry Osborn Taylor The instances of romantic chivalry and courtly love reviewed in the last chapter exemplify ideals of conduct in some respects opposed to Christian ethics. But there is still a famous poem of chivalry in which the romantic ideal has gained in ethical consideration and achieved a hard-won agreement with the teachings of mediaeval Christianity, and yet has not become monkish or lost its knightly character. This poem told of a struggle toward wisdom and toward peace; and the victory when won rested upon the broadest mediaeval thoughts of life, and therefore necessarily included the soul’s reconcilement to the saving ways of God. Yet it was knighthood’s battle, won on earth by strength of arm, by steadfast courage, and by loyalty to whatsoever through the weary years the man’s increasing wisdom recognized as right. A monk, seeking salvation, casts himself on God; the man that battles in the world is conscious that his own endeavour helps, and knows that God is ally to the valiant and not to him who lets his hands drop—even in the lap of God. Among the romances presumably having a remote Breton origin, and somehow connected with the Court of Arthur, was the tale of Parzival, the princely youth reared in foolish ignorance of life, who learned all knighthood’s lessons in the Sampleend, and became a perfect worshipful knight. This filetale was told and retold. The adventures of another knight, Gawain, were interwoven in it. Possibly the French poet, Chrétien de 3 Troies, about the year 1170, in his retelling, first brought into the story the conception of that thing, that magic dish, which in the course of its retellings became the Holy Grail. Chrétien did not finish his poem, and after him others completed or retold the story. Among them there was one who lacked the smooth facility of the French Trouvère, yet surpassed him and all others in thoughtfulness and dramatic power. This was the Bavarian, Wolfram von Eschenbach. He was a knight, and wandered from castle to castle and from court to court, and saw men. His generous patron was Hermann, Landgraf of Thüringen, who held court on the Wartburg, near Eisenach. There Wolfram may have composed his great poem in the opening years of the thirteenth century. He was no clerk, and had no clerkly education. Probably he could neither read nor write. But he lived during the best period of mediaeval German poetry, and the Wartburg was the centre of gay and literary life. Walther von der Vogelweide was one of Wolfram’s familiars in its halls. Wolfram knew and disapproved of Chrétien’s version of the Perceval; and said the story had been far better told by a certain Kyot, a singer of Provence. Nothing is known of the latter beyond Wolfram’s praise. Perhaps he was an invention of Wolfram’s; not infrequently mediaeval poets referred to fictitious sources. At all events, Wolfram’s sources were French or Provençal. In large measure the best German mediaeval poetry was an adaptation of the French; a fact Samplewhich did not prevent the German adaptations file from occasionally surpassing the French works they were drawn from. In the instance of Wolfram’s Parzival, as in that of 4 Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan, the German poems were the great renderings of these tales. As our author was a thoughtful German, his style is difficult and involved. Yet he had imagination, and his poem is great in the climaxes of the story. It is a poem of the hero’s development, his spiritual progress. Apparently it was Wolfram who first realized the profound significance of the Parzival legend. Both the choice of subject and the contents of the poem reflect his temperament and opinions. Wolfram was a knight, and chose a knightly tale; for him knightly victories were the natural symbols of a man’s progress. He was also one living in the world, prizing its gifts, and entertaining merely a perfunctory approval of ascetic renunciation. The loyal love between man and woman was to him earth’s greatest good, and wedlock did not yield to celibacy in righteousness. Let fame and power and the glory of this world be striven for and won in loyalty and steadfastness and truth, in service of those who need aid, in mercy to the vanquished and in humility before God, with assurance that He is truth and loyalty and power, and never fails those who obey and serve Him. “While two wills (Zvifel, Zweifel == doubt) dwell near the heart, the soul is bitter. Shamed and graced the man whose dauntless mood is—piebald! In him both heaven and hell have part. Black-coloured the unsteadfast comrade; white the man whose thoughts keep troth. False comradeship is fit for hell Samplefire. Likewise let women heed whither they carryfile their honour, and on whom they bestow their love, that they may 5 not rue their troth. Before God, I counsel good women to observe right measure. Their fortress is shame: I cannot wish them better weal. The false one gains false reward; her praise vanishes. Wide is the fame of many a fair; but if her heart be counterfeit, ’tis a false gem set in gold. The woman true to womanhood, be hers the praise—not lessened by her outside hue. “Shall I now prove and draw a man and woman rightly? Hear then this tale of love—joy and anguish too. My story tells of faithfulness, of woman’s truth to womanhood, of man’s to manhood, never flinching. Steel was he; in strife his conquering hand still took the guerdon; he, brave and slowly wise, this hero whom I greet, sweet in the eyes of women, heart’s malady for them as well, himself a very flight from evil deed.” Such is Wolfram’s Prologue. The story opens in a forest, where Queen Herzeloide had buried herself with her infant son after the death in knightly battle of Prince Gahmuret, her husband. The broken-hearted, foolish mother is seeking to keep her boy in ignorance of arms and knights. He has made himself a bow; he shoots a bird—its song is hushed. This is the child’s first sorrow, and childish ignorance has been the cause; as afterwards youth’s folly and then man’s lack of wisdom will cause that child, grown large, more lasting anguish.

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