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As a writer of historical novels, I look to many sources. I need more than just the who-did-what political history, but something that sheds light on society, law, economy, military affairs and culture. It is hard to find all that in one book for your target period or country. But Jean Chandler’s “Codex Guide to the Medieval Baltic” manages just that for the Medieval Baltic states, collecting and condensing a vast amount of information into some highly readable pages.
Chandler writes about a time of interest to many — the late medieval and early Renaissance — but focuses on an unusual location, the Baltic states of Prussia, Lithuania, Poland and Russia, and the territory occupied by the Teutonic knights. The work in fact assumes that it was written as a guide for the sophisticated traveler of 1456.
The Codex gives details of these states, their government, peoples, geography, economy, currency, their towns and countries, languages, how they fight, and more. In short, it contains just about everything you need to know about these countries during that critical but often overlooked period in history.
One of the joys of reading history is how the truth crushes your expectations. The medieval and early Renaissance are periods which we moderns usually view through prisms of preconceptions that prove to be false and misleading. Chandler does a good job of lifting the fictional veil that 19th century romanticists and 20th century ideologues have cast over this time and the culture that flourished during that period.
For example, we all have grown up with the certainty that life then was nasty, brutish and dirty. It may have been for some, but certainly not all, or even most. People took regular baths and were attentive to cleanliness, and their standard of living, even for the peasants, was above subsistence. They weren’t well off by our inflated standards, but they generally weren’t starving most of the time.
The status of women during the period is often misrepresented in modern writing. While women legally were at a disadvantage, for most practical purposes they enjoyed far more equality and freedom than writers today want to admit. For instance, Chandler chronicles how a significant percentage of masters in the craft guilds were women. And, most surprising, he documents how women even obtained knighthood — not a lot of them, but he makes the case that at least 68 women in England during the 1300-1400s were listed in documents as knights.
Most of us, however, are interested in things military, and Chandler does not disappoint. He goes on at length about the military establishments of the people in the area, and there are extended discussions of their tactics and weaponry and the relative advantages and disadvantages the various militaries enjoyed.
Aside from its treatment of military affairs, however, the book is of particular interest to the HEMA martial artist. Chandler makes a case that the Baltic states, and their free German cities, were a crucible for the development and preservation of the arts we in HEMA seek to recreate. He points out that many of the masters whose fechtbucher we study came from a Baltic free city. The culture and military situation of these free cities was important to the development and preservation of these arts. All freemen in these cities were expected and required to be armed and to know how to use their weapons in order to defend the freedom of the city. They were evidently quite skilled. Chandler quotes a future Pope who was amazed at the skill he saw displayed by burghers in cities he visited. There is even an eyewitness account of a fechtschule competition.
This helps to put the creation of the fecthbucher into context. While Chandler does not say so outright, his presentation implies that the fechtbucher were written by men in the free cities to perpetuate and communicate their martial skills so that they could better defend their guilds and their towns.
Last but not least, I should mention that the book is lavishly illustrated throughout with dozens of period drawings. This alone makes the book worth having.
Altogether, I highly recommend “Codex Guide to the Medieval Baltic.”
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