Waiting for the publication of new books on medieval horses is, following the famous English idiom, a bit like waiting for London buses: you wait for ages and then several come along at once. Studies of medieval horses are certainly flourishing, with some significant edited collections and historically and archaeologically focused volumes hitting the shelves recently. And in a somewhat crowded field of runners the good news is that leading horse historian Anastasija Ropa’s new book in Reaktion’s Medieval Lives series is close to the front of the pack and should prove to be a stayer. The aim is not to provide the last word about a complex and wide-ranging subject; rather, this colourful and engagingly written volume is intended as a concise and accessible overview of the multiple uses and meanings of horses in the Middle Ages.
Sandwiched between the introduction and conclusion are six attractively illustrated chapters. Chapter One, “Real and Imagines Equines in the Medieval East and West,” introduces the reader to the many different types of horses—the concept of “breed” is not applicable to the Middle Ages—according to their uses, appearance and equipment. Medieval societies developed a sophisticated equine lexicon that differentiated these animals, with the destrier (the classic warhorse) at the summit of the horsey hierarchy. The chapter benefits from a useful discussion of warhorse size that joins the calls of other recent scholarship to stick the boot into the hoary old myth that destriers were huge draught-horse-like animals.
Medieval horses fulfilled a multiplicity of roles, ranging from their more mundane uses as forms of transport and beasts of burden to the expensive and expertly trained elite mounts used for warfare, hunting and chivalric ritual. Chapter Two, “The Less Glamorous Horse: Breeding, Working and ‘Wild’ Equines,” ensures that the coverage of horse types is balanced through a focus on horses’ more workaday uses. We encounter horses pulling ploughs, litters and carts and consider how they were stabled (although surviving structures mainly represent stables at the top of the tree). The chapter also considers “wild” horses, although as the author acknowledges, quite how we understand the term is up for debate, as some free-roaming forest-dwelling animals were also personal property.
Chapter Three, “Horses and Horsemanship of Military Elites,” explores horses as identity markers, especially in aristocratic and knightly contexts. The first part of the chapter sees Chaucer’s pilgrims, vividly represented in the early fifteenth-century Ellesmere manuscript, take centre stage as a device to look at relationships between riders and their mounts that were both complex and reflexive. Chivalry was a major force shaping horse use—and of course the reverse also applied—and the chapter also explores specific spaces for the social display of horsemanship in elite and courtly settings. A great strength of the book is its nuanced reading of equestrian relationships between East and West, which brings out some striking contrasts as well as commonalties: for instance, while no self-respecting Western knight would ride a mare into battle, they were extensively ridden and valued by some Eastern military-nomadic societies.
Chapter Four, “Horses in War and Equestrian Equipment,” homes in on the key issue that horses (equi) far outnumbered elite warhorses (destriers and equivalents) in most European medieval armies, and were used for a vast array of purposes on campaign, many of them very humdrum. The chapter also scratches the surface of the fascinating subject of very long-distance equine trade routes, including from the Arabian peninsula to pre-modern India, and deliberates on the challenges involves in their operation and reconstruction.
Chapter Five, “The Horse and the Supernatural,” shifts the focus to the prominent place of the horse in medieval superstition and religious practices, in doing so covering aspects of horse care and sympathetic magic. Horse sacrifice and burial, sometimes along with owners and riders, was prominent in many early medieval European cultures. And while reverence of the horse is a key theme, it is interesting to note how archaeology can cast a different angle on the subject, with widespread evidence across later medieval societies for carcasses being variously discarded, upcycled and discarded without ceremony, as shown by the scattered patterns of bones common across many excavated sites.
Chapter Six, “Illustrious Riders and Famous Horses,” digs into the depth of the bonds between horses and riders, including the fascinating evidence for horse-naming. Horses were seen as especially faithful, although the author also considers the flip-side, of how the relationship sometimes went sour, and reflects refreshingly on how horse-human relationships could challenge gender identities. The concluding chapter reflects on the legacy of the medieval horse, including breeds with supposed medieval roots and the medievalism of ever-popular reenactments.
Ropa is one of the foremost scholars in the field of horse history—or horsetory, if you like—and one of the volume’s great attributes is the insight provided by somebody whose understanding of horses is grounded in practical application and emersion in a culture of engaged equestrianism as well as deep learning in archives and libraries. Ropa is at ease moving between the worlds of manuscript art and romance literature and between financial records and religious texts, and material culture gets a more occasional look in, too. Yet at its heart the book is ultimately written from the point of view of equine history. This may seem an obvious point but is important. The future vibrancy of this academic research field will also hinge on contributions from, for example, archaeologists and biologists who approach and enrich the subject from another angle entirely. From an archaeological perspective this is a particularly exciting time for the subject as DNA analysis will be transforming the way we understand the diffusion of horses in the medieval and early modern world in the same way that has already taken place for prehistory, potentially corroborating, nuancing or even contradicting some of the theories and received wisdom discussed here.
With such an ambitious global scope, covering both Western and non-Western societies, there are naturally challenges in jumping between different regions and cultures within a relatively concise volume. A hugely positive quality of the writing is the number of fascinating vignettes, focused on individuals or particular social settings, which the author shows considerable skill in stitching together within a compelling over-arching narrative. The volume comes in a compact, colourful format, with the clear, accessibly written (and jargon-free) text punctuated by numerous impactful images, many of them drawn from manuscripts. These bring into sharp focus the place of the horse in medieval visual culture and the applicability of horse imagery to make a very wide range of political, moral and spiritual points. References are provided as endnotes, and a short select bibliography brings together a selection of the more essential scholarship, mainly but not entirely published in English.
Overall, this welcome, scholarly, and readable book has implications for many branches of medieval studies, given the sheer ubiquity of horses in the Middle Ages and the way they touch so many aspects of life. As such, it provides a window into very varied aspects of the medieval world stretching far beyond warfare, including transport, agriculture, elite society and ritual, to name only a few. It makes a telling contribution to horse history and more, and can be highly recommended to all as a go-to volume.