Arthur and the Round Table (or Celtics, Germans and others)
One of our presenters, Piers, has suggested that the reason feudalism (i.e. the system of service-for-protection) grew out of areas conquered by Germanic peoples, but did not evolve (or really "take") in Celtic areas, was because, in Germanic culture, a warrior could sell his loyalty but Celtic culture not so: it was much more rigidly kin-based.
Christopher I. Beckwith, in his Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present (first of three part review here), talks of the Central Eurasian Cultural Complex, a key feature of which was the warrior band personally sworn to the leader. He regards the conquest by Germanic peoples of the former Western Roman Empire as the spread of that set of cultural patterns across Europe which, interacting with the remnants of Classical civilisation, created medieval Europe.
Given the mobility inherent in nomad pastoralism, if one person injured the life or property of another, it could be hard to track him down to get recompense. The more kin support you had, the easier that was to do. Alternatively, one could take recompense from one of his kin. Hence the importance of kinship and lineage in pastoralist cultures: it was the prime protection mechanism. Me against my brother, my brother and I against my cousin, my brothers and cousins against the world as the Arab proverb goes. Phillip Carl Salzman, in his Culture and Conflict in the Middle East, goes into these mechanisms in some detail.
The importance of such kin and lineage networks was a problem for any leader who wanted to unite people across lineages or kin groups. A solution was to have a band of warriors sworn to him personally above all else. A pattern, as Beckwith says, you see again and again. For example, huscarls. Indeed, the pattern of land-holding-service-for-protection which developed in medieval Europe, Parthian and Sassanid Iran and Japan -- the knights, azadan and samurai respectively -- all come from cultures with Central Eurasian origins.
The most historically important example of a leader in predominantly pastoralist culture dominated by kin groups and lineages with a sworn warrior band was Muhammad's Companions (which were probably not as formal as such groups usually were). But the most famous example in myth and literature is Arthur and knights of the Round Table.
Which makes me wonder how Celtic the Arthurian tales really are. I realise that the Sarmatian hypothesis gets Arthurians all worked up and I have no particular problem with locating a historical Arthur with a putative Romano-Britain Dux Bellorum struggling to keep things afloat after the legions have abandoned Britain, before the Justinian plague delivers a fatally undermining demographic blow. But the fourth and fifth centuries were period of great demographic flux in Western Europe. It is, when one thinks about it, quite odd to have Celtic tales becoming so entangled with chivalric literature. It is much less odd if there were, from the beginnings of the tale, individuals whose cultural origins included the warrior band sworn to the leader regardless of kinship.
Christopher I. Beckwith, in his Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present (first of three part review here), talks of the Central Eurasian Cultural Complex, a key feature of which was the warrior band personally sworn to the leader. He regards the conquest by Germanic peoples of the former Western Roman Empire as the spread of that set of cultural patterns across Europe which, interacting with the remnants of Classical civilisation, created medieval Europe.
Given the mobility inherent in nomad pastoralism, if one person injured the life or property of another, it could be hard to track him down to get recompense. The more kin support you had, the easier that was to do. Alternatively, one could take recompense from one of his kin. Hence the importance of kinship and lineage in pastoralist cultures: it was the prime protection mechanism. Me against my brother, my brother and I against my cousin, my brothers and cousins against the world as the Arab proverb goes. Phillip Carl Salzman, in his Culture and Conflict in the Middle East, goes into these mechanisms in some detail.
The importance of such kin and lineage networks was a problem for any leader who wanted to unite people across lineages or kin groups. A solution was to have a band of warriors sworn to him personally above all else. A pattern, as Beckwith says, you see again and again. For example, huscarls. Indeed, the pattern of land-holding-service-for-protection which developed in medieval Europe, Parthian and Sassanid Iran and Japan -- the knights, azadan and samurai respectively -- all come from cultures with Central Eurasian origins.
The most historically important example of a leader in predominantly pastoralist culture dominated by kin groups and lineages with a sworn warrior band was Muhammad's Companions (which were probably not as formal as such groups usually were). But the most famous example in myth and literature is Arthur and knights of the Round Table.
Which makes me wonder how Celtic the Arthurian tales really are. I realise that the Sarmatian hypothesis gets Arthurians all worked up and I have no particular problem with locating a historical Arthur with a putative Romano-Britain Dux Bellorum struggling to keep things afloat after the legions have abandoned Britain, before the Justinian plague delivers a fatally undermining demographic blow. But the fourth and fifth centuries were period of great demographic flux in Western Europe. It is, when one thinks about it, quite odd to have Celtic tales becoming so entangled with chivalric literature. It is much less odd if there were, from the beginnings of the tale, individuals whose cultural origins included the warrior band sworn to the leader regardless of kinship.