Read Life in a Medieval Castle Online
Authors: Joseph Gies
Life in a Medieval Castle (25 page)
Munzenberg.
Hesse. Built 1174; elliptical enclosure on top of a mountain, with two round towers and a forward tower guarding the west approach; living quarters, chapel and kitchen along the inside of the curtain.
Wildenberg.
Bavaria. Late twelfth century, rectangular enclosure on top of a mountain; square towers guarding the line of approach.
Eltz.
On the Moselle. Begun by the counts of Eltz in 1157, mostly dating from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries; the oldest surviving structure is the Platteltz Tower (twelfth or thirteenth century), partly restored after a fire in the 1920s; nearby are the ruins of
Trutzeltz,
the castle of the archbishop of Trier who carried on a protracted feud with the counts of Eltz and finally compelled them to surrender.
Heidenreichstein.
Austria. Built in the twelfth century; a square tower was added in the thirteenth century, a round tower later.
Rapottenstein.
Austria. Built in the twelfth century on a rock outcropping; there are a round tower defending the approaches, a square tower higher up, and residential buildings.
Ortenberg.
Bavaria. Early thirteenth century; three baileys, the inner and middle in a line, the outer bailey in front of both, with a rising approach; the enemy had to pass the length of the outer
bailey under attack from the inner and middle ones, then up a flight of steps and through a barbican and three other gateways before the inner bailey was reached; a trapezoidal keep at the highest point is surrounded closely by the wall of the inner bailey.
Falkenberg.
Bavaria. Built about 1290 on a huge natural pile of boulders overlooking the Waldnaab River; the curtain follows the contour of the rocks; the buildings of the castle are between the curtain and a small internal courtyard containing a square keep.
Hohensalzburg.
Austria. Residence of the archbishop of Salzburg, built in the twelfth century on a rock 400 feet above the Salzach River; modeled after the Crusader castles, later enlarged and remodeled; massive curtain walls, round towers.
THER
E
UROPEAN
C
ASTLES
Pfeffengen
and
Dornach.
Switzerland. Two shell keeps of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries built within a few miles of each other; in both cases, the shell wall, instead of being built on top of the mound, is built against its vertical sides, containing the mound and rising high above it.
Chillon.
Switzerland. Castle made famous by Byron’s poem; built in the thirteenth century on the site of a ninth-century castle, on a rocky island in a lake, reached by a bridge leading to a gatehouse; the curtain wall follows the contours of the rock, and the buildings of the castle are constructed around the inner court, with a square keep at the end farthest from the bridge.
Castle of the Counts of Flanders.
Ghent. Built in 1180, on the site of an eleventh-century fortress, by Philip of Alsace on his return from Crusade, and modeled on the Crusader castles; on level ground, surrounded by a moat and high curtain walls with round towers; a rectangular keep has a lesser hall on the first floor, the great hall above.
Carrickfergus.
Northern Ireland. Built on the shores of Belfast Loch, c. 1180-1205; square Norman keep joined to curtain walls.
Trim.
Ireland. Built c. 1190-1200, the largest Anglo-Norman castle in Ireland; square keep with projecting wings, thirteenth-century curtain walls with round towers.
RUSADER
C
ASTLES
From a strictly military point of view, the castles built by the Templars, Hospitallers, and other Crusaders are incomparable. Drawing on European, Byzantine, and Muslim models and on their own experience, the Crusaders built strongholds of immense size and ingeniously related defenses in which small garrisons, supplied for as much as five years, could defy large armies.
Saone
(
Sahyun
). Syria. The best-preserved Crusader castle, with a half mile of fortification in the shape of a rough isosceles triangle atop a mountain spur, the two long sides fronting on precipitous cliffs, the base on a 60-foot-wide, 90-foot-deep moat hewn out of the rock, a “needle” of the rock left to act as a bridge pier, with a drawspan to the postern; the square keep built against the curtain wall on the moat side.
Krak des Chevaliers.
Syria. The giant “Citadel [
Krak
] of the Knights,” the most powerful and famous of the Crusader castles, almost as well preserved as Saone; begun early in the twelfth century and strengthened by the Hospitallers in 1142; two concentric walls enclose two baileys, an outer and an inner, the latter high on the spur of Gebel Alawi. Besieged at least twelve times, this castle “stuck like a bone in the throat of the Saracens,” in the words of a Muslim writer; in one siege, that of 1163, the Hospitallers not only held off the army of Nur-ed-Din but sallied out to surprise and defeat it; even in 1271, a lone outpost in a Muslim sea, its garrison down to 300 knights, the Krak held out until the Muslim general Baibars tricked the defenders with a forged order, after which he chivalrously gave the knights safe conduct to the coast.
Anamur.
A seacoast castle in Turkey, with a huge fourteen-sided tower dominating the beach, and three baileys, one facing the land, one the sea, and a third on high ground between the two.
Chastel Pélérin
(“
Pilgrim Castle
”). Israel. Built by the Templars in 1218 and well supplied with artillery and heavily garrisoned when the Muslims besieged it unsuccessfully in 1220, it was never taken, but was abandoned in 1291 after the fall of nearby Acre, and afterward badly damaged by Muslim engineers quarrying it to rebuild the city.
C
HAPTER
I.
The Castle Comes to England
A
NDERSON
, W. F. D.,
Castles of Europe: from Charlemagne to the Renaissance.
London, 1970.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
trans. James Ingram. London, 1923.
A
RMITAGE
, E
LLA
,
Early Norman Castles.
London, 1912.
B
AYET
, M
ARIE
,
Les Châteaux de France.
Paris, 1927.
B
EELER
, J
OHN
,
Warfare in England, 1066-1189.
Ithaca, N.Y., 1966.
______,
Warfare in Feudal Europe, 730-1200.
Ithaca, N.Y., 1971.
B
RAUN
, H
UGH
,
The English Castle.
London, 1936.
B
ROOKE
, C
HRISTOPHER
,
From Alfred to Henry III, 871-1272.
Edinburgh, 1961.
B
ROWN
, R. A
LLEN
,
Dover Castle.
London, 1966 (Ministry of Works).
______,
Rochester Castle.
London, 1969 (Ministry of Works).
C
LEATOR
, P. E.,
Castles and Kings.
London, 1963.
C
OTTRELL
, L
EONARD
,
The Roman Forts of the Saxon Shore.
London, 1971 (Department of the Environment).
D
AVIS
, H. W. C.,
England Under the Normans and Angevins, 1066-1272.
London, 1937.
D
OUGLAS
, D
AVID
C.,
The Norman Achievement, 1050-1100.
Berkeley, 1969.
______,
William the Conqueror: the Norman Impact upon England.
Berkeley, 1967.
D
UTTON
, R
ALPH
,
The Châteaux of France.
London, 1957.
E
CHAGUË
, J
OSÉ
O
RTIZ
,
España: castillos y alcazares.
Madrid, 1956.
F
EDDEN
, H
ENRY
R., and T
HOMSON
, J
OHN
,
Crusader Castles.
London, 1957.
F
ORMILLI
, C. J. G.,
The Castles of Italy.
London, 1933.
H
AHN
, H
ANNO
,
Hohenstaufenburgen in Süditalien.
Ingelheim, Germany, 1961.
H
ARVEY
, J
OHN
,
The Gothic World, 1100-1600.
London, 1950.
H
ASKINS
, C
HARLES
H
OMER
,
The Normans in European History.
New York, 1915.
H
OLLISTER
, C. W
ARREN
,
The Military Organization of Norman England.
Oxford, 1965.
M
ÜLLER
-W
ARNER
, W
OLFGANG
,
Castles of the Crusades.
New York, 1966.
O’N
EIL
, B. H. S
T
. J.,
Castles: an Introduction to the Castles of England and Wales.
London, 1973 (Ministry of Works).
O
RDERICUS
V
ITALIS
,
Ecclesiastical History of England and Normandy,
trans. Thomas Forester, 4 vols. London, 1858.
P
EERS
, C
HARLES
,
Pevensey Castle.
London, 1953 (Ministry of Works).
P
ERKS
, J. C.,
Chepstow Castle.
London, 1962 (Ministry of Works).
P
IPER
, O
TTO
,
Abriss der Burgenkunde.
Leipzig, 1914.
R
ENN
, D. F.,
Norman Castles.
London and New York, 1968.
______,
Three Shell Keeps.
London, 1969 (Ministry of Works).
S
ANDERS
, I. J.,
English Baronies, a Study of Their Origin and Descent, 1086-1327.
Oxford, 1960.
S
CHMIDT
, R
ICHARD
,
Burgen des Deutschen Mittelalter.
Munich, 1957.
S
TENTON
, S
IR
F
RANK
,
The First Century of English Feudalism.
Oxford, 1961.
T
HOMPSON
, A. H
AMILTON
,
Military Architecture in England During the Middle Ages.
London, 1912.
T
OMKEIEFF
, O. G.,
Life in Norman England.
New York, 1967.
T
OY
, S
IDNEY
,
The Castles of Great Britain.
London, 1953.
T
OY
, S
IDNEY
.
A History of Fortification from 3000 B.C. to A.D. 1700.
London, 1955.
T
UULSE
, A.,
Castles of the Western World.
London, 1958.
W
ILLIAM OF
M
ALMESBURY
,
Historia novella,
trans. K. R. Potter. London, 1955.
HAPTER
II.
The Lord of the Castle
B
LOCH
, M
ARC
,
Feudal Society,
trans. L. A. Manyon, 2 vols. Chicago, 1964.
______,
Seigneurie française et manoir anglaise.
Paris, 1960.
B
OUTRUCHE
, R
OBERT
,
Seigneurie et féodalité,
2 vols. Paris, 1970.
C
AM
, H
ELEN
, M.,
Liberties and Communities in Medieval England.
Cambridge, England, 1944.
The Cambridge Economic History of Europe,
vol. I,
The Agrarian Life of the Middle Ages,
second edition, ed. M. M. Postan. Cambridge, England, 1966.
C
RONNE
, H. A.,
The Reign of Stephen, 1135-54, Anarchy in England.
London, 1970.
* D
AVIS
, H. W. C.,
England Under the Normans and Angevins.
* D
OUGLAS
, D
AVID
C.,
The Norman Achievement.
* ______,
William the Conqueror.
G
ALBERT OF
B
RUGES
,
The Murder of Charles the Good, Count of Flanders,
trans. James Bruce Ross. New York, 1967.
G
ANSHOF
, F. L.,
Feudalism,
trans. Philip Grierson. New York, 1964.
L’Histoire de Guillaume Maréchal, comte de Striguil et de Pembroke, régent d’Angleterre de 1216 à 1219,
ed. Paul Meyer. Paris, 1891-1901.
* H
OLLISTER
, C. W
ARREN
,
The Military Organization of Norman England.
K
EETON
, G
EORGE
W.,
The Norman Conquest and the Common Law.
London, 1966.
M
ORRIS
, W
ILLIAM
A
LFRED
,
The Medieval English Sheriff to 1300.
Manchester, England, 1927.
* See earlier citation.
N
ORGATE
, K
ATE
,
The Minority of Henry III.
London, 1912.
P
AINTER
, S
IDNEY
,
Feudalism and Liberty,
ed. Fred A. Cazel, Jr. Baltimore, 1961.
______,
Studies in the History of the English Feudal Barony.
Baltimore, 1943.
______,
William Marshal, Knight Errant, Baron and Regent of England.
Baltimore, 1933.
P
ARIS
, M
ATTHEW
,
English History from the Year 1235 to 1273,
trans. J. A. Giles. London, 1854.
* P
ERKS
, J. C.,
Chepstow Castle.
P
OWICKE
, F. M.,
King Henry III and the Lord Edward,
2 vols. Oxford, 1947.
R
OUND
, J. H.,
Feudal England.
London, 1895.
* S
ANDERS
, I. J.,
English Baronies.
S
TENTON
, D
ORIS
M.,
English Society in the Early Middle Ages
(
1066-1307
). Harmondsworth, England, 1951.
* S
TENTON
, S
IR
F
RANK
,
The First Century of English Feudalism.
S
TRAYER
, J
OSEPH
R.,
Feudalism.
Princeton, 1965.
W
ILKINSON
, B.,
Studies in the Constitutional History of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries.
Manchester, England, 1952.
HAPTER
III.
The Castle as a House
* B
RAUN
, H
UGH
,
The English Castle.
C
OLVIN
, H. M., ed.,
Building Accounts of Henry III.
Oxford, 1971.
L
ABARGE
, M
ARGARET
W
ADE
,
A Baronial Household of the Thirteenth Century.
New York, 1966.
* P
ARIS
, M
ATTHEW
,
English History.
P
ARKER
, J. H., and T
URNER
, T. H.,
Some Account of Domestic Architecture in England.
Oxford, 1877.
* P
ERKS
, J. C.,
Chepstow Castle.
* T
OMKEIEFF
, O. G.,
Life in Norman England.
* T
OY
, S
IDNEY
,
The Castles of Great Britain.
Walter of Henley’s Husbandry, Together with an Anonymous Husbandry, Seneschaucie, and Robert Grosseteste’s Rules,
trans. Elizabeth Lamond. London, 1890.
* See earlier citation.
W
HITE
, L
YNN
, J
R
., “Technology Assessment from the Stance of a Medieval Historian.”
American Historical Review,
1974.
W
OOD
, M
ARGARET
E.,
The English Mediaeval House.
London, 1965.
W
RIGHT
, L
AWRENCE
,
Clean and Decent.
London, 1960.
HAPTER
IV.
The Lady
A
LBERTUS
M
AGNUS
,
Opera Omnia,
vol. XII,
Quaestiones super de Animalibus,
ed. Bernhardus Geyer. Aschendorff, 1955.
A
NDREAS
C
APELLANUS
,
The Art of Courtly Love,
trans. J. J. Parry. New York, 1941.
Aucassin and Nicolette and Other Medieval Romances and Legends
, trans. Eugene Mason. New York, 1958.
B
EARD
, M
ARY
,
Women as a Force in History.
New York, 1946.
B
ENTON
, J
OHN
, “Clio and Venus: An Historical View of Medieval Love,” in F. X. Newman, ed.,
The Meaning of Courtly Love.
Albany, 1968.
______, “The Court of Champagne as a Literary Center.”
Speculum,
1961.
The Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry, Compiled for the Instruction of His Daughters,
ed. Thomas Wright. London, 1868.
The Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond,
trans. L. C. Jane. New York, 1966.
C
REEKMORE
, H
UBERT
,
Lyrics of the Middle Ages.
New York, 1959.
G
AUTIER
, L
ÉON
,
Chivalry,
trans. D. C. Dunning. London, 1959.
Gesta Stephani, the Deeds of Stephen,
trans. K. R. Potter. London, 1955.
H
OWARD
, G. E.,
A History of Matrimonial Institutions.
Chicago, 1904.
* L
ABARGE
, M
ARGARET
W
ADE
,
A Baronial Household.
L
ANGLOIS
, C
HARLES
-V
ICTOR
,
La Vie en France au moyen âge de la fin du XII’ au milieu du XIV’ siècle d’après des moralistes du temps.
Paris, 1925.
* P
AINTER
, S
IDNEY
,
Feudalism and Liberty.
* See earlier citation.
P
AINTER
, S
IDNEY
,
French Chivalry.
Ithaca, N.Y., 1962.
P
ARIS
, G
ASTON
, ed., “Le Lai du Lecheoir,”
Romania,
1879.
* P
ARIS
, M
ATTHEW
,
English History.
P
OWER
, E
ILEEN
, “The Position of Women,” in C. G. Crump and E. F. Jacob, eds.,
Legacy of the Middle Ages.
Oxford, 1926.
P
RESTAGE
, E
DGAR
, ed.,
Chivalry, A Series of Studies to Illustrate Its Historical Significance and Civilizing Influence.
London, 1928.
R
ENART
, J
EAN
,
L’Escoufle,
ed. Joseph Bédier. Paris, 1913.
______,
Galeran de Bretagne,
ed. Lucien Foulet. Paris, 1925.
Le Roman du castelain de Couci et de la dame de Fayel,
ed. John E. Matzke and Maurice Delbouille. Paris, 1936.
S
HIRLEY
, W. W., ed.,
Royal and Other Historical Letters Illustrative of the Reign of Henry III.
Vol. I, 1216-1235. London, 1862.
S
TENTON
, D
ORIS
M.,
The English Woman in History.
London, 1959.
V
ITRY
, J
ACQUES DE
,
Exempla, or Illustrative Stories from the Sermones Vulgares,
ed. Thomas F. Crane. London, 1890.