Popular Protest in Late Medieval Europe, by Samuel K. Cohn Jr., is part of the Manchester Medieval Sources Series. The aim of this excellent series is to provide both students and teachers with English translations of key sources of medieval history, supplemented with ample introductory and advisory material to aid in interpreting the sources, navigating linguistic problems, and assessing current scholarship on the particular topic. Cohn delivers all this and more in just under 400 pages.
Focusing primarily on the impact of the Black Death (1347-48) and its relation to popular protest, Cohn chooses sources dating between the mid-thirteenth and early fifteenth centuries; he believes that the revolts of the fifteenth century deserve their own volume due to their closer relation to the Peasant's War in Germany than to the effects of plague. Cohn has meticulously selected, translated and annotated over 200 diverse sources from the period but concentrates on a post-plague 'contagion of revolts' clustered between 1355 and 1382 (1). The sources Cohn edits include, but are not limited to, chronicles, songs, poems, letters of remission, diaries, and judicial records. Most of the fascinating sources included in this volume had never before been translated into English, others had never before been edited; for this reason alone Cohn has done Anglophone scholars and seminars a tremendous service. Geographically, Cohn concentrates on Italy, Languedoc, and northern France and Flanders; France and Italy get the lion's share of attention in the volume because of the amount of work already done by historians on Flanders and because Cohn wishes to draw attention to the similar organization, aims, and range of popular protest found in these disparate regions. Throughout the volume, Cohn seeks to show the diversity of popular protest found in these areas, in both cities and the countryside, while maintaining focus on what made these revolts 'popular' and acts of 'protest'.
Using as his model R. B. Dobson's authoritative collection of documents pertaining to England's most famous medieval upheaval, the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, Cohn has done nothing less than provide researchers with a long-needed point of comparison to the English sources concerning popular protest in the late Middle Ages. Indeed, Anglophone students and researchers now have an equal opportunity to examine revolt on both sides of La Manche, armed quite literally with a range of riveting, informative, occasionally grisly, and--most importantly--highly accessible accounts of popular protest.
Cohn divides the book into six chapters, each prefaced with an informative introduction that serves to situate the sources in their respective historical contexts, as well as to frame scholarly debates concerning subjects like the Jacquerie and the Ciompi revolts. In his introductory remarks, Cohn tends to stress the rebels' agency in organizing and conducting violent protest, and the sources chosen for this volume largely corroborate such a view. Rejecting scholarship that argues that the Ciompi insurgents possessed 'little social cohesion' or class consciousness, Cohn concurs with scholars like Richard Trexler who attribute greater originality to the Ciompi (201- 02). Cohn supports this argument with over fifty pages of sometimes stunning sources, including an anonymous, acrimonious Florentine diary (#121), which reveal marked organization and social awareness on the part of the rebelling workers and artisans.
The chapters proceed chronologically and geographically, with chapters one and two focusing on popular protest in Flanders, France and Italy in the period before the plague (1245 to 1348), and from the plague to 1378, respectively. The documents demonstrate that violent revolts in the wake of the Black Death were largely spontaneous, like those in the preceding century. It is with the onslaught of the second wave of plague in 1357-58 that large-scale protests and revolts became more numerous within Europe. Cohn spends the entire third chapter examining one such post-second plague revolt, the Jacquerie in France (1358). Likewise, chapter four is devoted to another famous revolt, that of the Ciompi in Italy (1378-82). Chapter five explores the cluster of revolts north of the Alps (1378-82), which Cohn largely attributes to growing strain from the Hundred Years War and the corresponding rise in taxes. Again, Cohn emphasizes the level of organization and interconnectedness among the insurgents amongst various revolts, particularly in northern France and Flanders. Finally, chapter six examines France and Italy in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Tax revolts continued in France, for example, and a wave of peasant insurrections plagued the mountainous countryside north of Florence during its war with Milan. The volume includes useful maps of the regions of France and Flanders, late medieval Paris and Florence, and towns and villages of the Jacquerie, Languedoc, and Central Italy (xviii-xxiv).
Popular Protest is a valuable resource for scholars and students seeking a better understanding of social unrest in late medieval France, Italy and Flanders. Cohn's collection of sources challenges understandings of popular protest held by some historians of the early-modern period, particularly regarding the nature and complexity of 'medieval' revolts, the causes of these varied protests, and whether or not such revolts proved effective against the powers that be. Rather than confirming modern stereotypes of simplicity and otherness, many of the revolts described in these documents share striking continuity with those of early modernity. Similarities include ideological impetuses behind labor strikes and tax riots, a sometimes surprising degree of organization among the revolts' participants, and often strong corporate identity among the protesters. The complexity of such revolts is seen time and time again through the participants' intricate use of banners, flags, and clothing to rally the faithful and identify (or disguise) friend from foe. It is also interesting to note the fascinating array of provocative chants shouted by the insurgents: i.e. "Long live the people and death to the wolves!" (48); "Let's break the chains and storm the gate of the Palace of the Nine, destroy their houses, shops, and those of certain other rich ones!" (59); and a personal favorite, "Long live the Populo Minuto and death to the fat cats and the gabelles!" (71).
Symbolic or ritual acts of shaming and violence also accompanied certain protests, such as hanging effigies in windows (96), dragging a ballot box tied to a donkey's tail (114), and mocking the French realm by raising a great fat cloth vendor "up onto a throne as though a monarch", parading him through the streets, and "parodying the acclamations that would be made to a king". This carnivalesque spectacle, though a prelude to grievous mob violence, was memorably recorded by a chronicler as "a scene so ridiculous that it even justifiably made prudent men laugh" (276-77). As in the English Peasants' Revolt, the destruction of official documents also occurs throughout the sources amassed by Cohn (for example, pp. 114, 237, 254, 255, 273, 277, 290, and 295). 'The people' were not the only ones capable of communicating in such effective ways. The King of Navarre's men, for example, after capturing the Jacquerie's leader, reportedly placed a glowing hot iron crown on his head as a grim response to his having dared don a circlet of gold when terrorizing the kingdom (172).
While Popular Protest is deserving of much praise, students, teachers, and researchers might find it particularly helpful if Cohn included a more lengthy discussion of nuances between terms like 'riot', 'revolt', 'uprising', and the like (5-7), considering how often such terms appear in the sources. Moreover, while Cohn generally does include the original Latin, Italian, etc. for ambiguous or difficult place names and phrases, he sometimes did not do so when providing rather colloquial translations like "let off steam" (115), "at the beck and call" (134), "put on a good face" (160), "dragged their feet" (296), and "deals he'd cut" (370). It would have been useful to see the original phrasing in such cases. Incidentally, La Croix-Saint-Ouen is located just south of Compiegne (172 n. 76).
As a final point, such a well-researched, translated, and annotated collection of illuminating documents deserves a reliable, consistent index with which to exploit fully the remarkable sources. For example, I found another 14 instances where 'bells' were mentioned in the sources, oftentimes playing a key role in the events described. Likewise, there were at least another 20 instances where 'conspiracy' was mentioned, and dozens more with 'fire', either in the form of bonfires, arson, or setting people aflame. Other notable omissions from the index include information regarding 'assemblies', "barricades," "butchers," "chants," "clergy," "crossbows/crossbowmen," 'execution', 'flags', 'grain', 'guilds', 'hoods', 'Jews', 'money', 'oaths', 'prisons', 'rape', 'robbery', 'secret meetings', 'soldiers', 'trumpets', 'weapons', and 'women'. Furthermore, it would be useful to include 'defenestration' (pp. 30, 207(?), and 358) and 'sanctuary' (pp. 97, 279, 312, and 342). Lastly, considering how frequently people were hanged, beheaded, broken on the wheel, drawn and quartered, and otherwise mutilated in these rich sources, undergraduate interest could be further peaked by including such subjects in the index for easy reference.
In sum, Popular Protest in Late Medieval Europe is an invaluable book for teachers, students and researchers; I look forward to using it my own courses. Medievalists and early-modernists alike will look forward to improved accessibility to this wonderful volume should this valuable resource be re-printed.