Hannah Skoda & Patrick Lantschner 
Contact and Exchange in Later Medieval Europe 
Essays in Honour of Malcolm Vale

The complexity of the interplay and relationships over various borders in medieval Europe is here fully teased out.


The processes by which ideas, objects, texts and political thought and experience moved across boundaries in the Middle Ages form the focus of this book, which also seeks to reassess the nature of the boundaries themselves; it thus appropriately reflects a major theme of Dr Malcolm Vale’s work, which the essays collected here honour. They suggest ways of breaking down established historiographical paradigms of Europe as a set of distinct polities, achieving a more nuanced picture in which people and objects were constantly moving, and challenging previous conceptions of units and borders.

The first section examines the construction of boundaries and units in the later Middle Ages, via topics ranging from linguistic units to social stratifications, and geographically from the Netherlands and Scotland to Gascony and the Iberian peninsula; it reveals how much the relationship between exchange and boundaries was reciprocal. The second section considers the mechanisms by which it took place, from West Africa to Italy and Flanders, and discusses the actual exchange of people, texts, and unusual artefacts. Overall, the essays bear witness to the constant interplay and interconnections throughout medieval Europe and beyond.


Contributors: Paul Booth, Maria João Violante Branco, Rita Costa-Gomes, Mario Damen, Jan Dumolyn, Jean Dunbabin, Jean-Philippe Genet, Michael Jones, Maurice Keen, Frédérique Lachaud, Patrick Lantschner, Guilhem Pépin, R.L.J. Shaw, Hannah Skoda, Erik Spindler, John Watts.

Table of Content

The Work of Malcolm Vale – Michael Jones

Principal Bibliography of Malcolm Vale

Introduction – Patrick Lantschner and Hannah Skoda

Economic Development, Social Space and Political Power in Bruges, c. 1127-1302 – Jan Dumolyn

Flemings in the Peasants’ Revolt, 1381 – Erik Spindler

Does a Common Language Mean a Shared Allegiance? Language, Identity, Geography and their Links with Polities: The Cases of Gascony and Brittany – Guilhem Pepin

Revisiting the Political Uses of Vernacular Language in Portugal during the Thirteenth Century: On Models, Motives and Modes – Maria Joao Violante Branco

Scotland in the Later Middle Ages: A Province or a Foreign Kingdom for the English? – Jean-Philippe Genet

The Angevin Legacy, Dynastic Rivalry, and the Aftermath of the Hundred Years War, 1453-1491 – Maurice Keen

In and Out of Africa: Iberian Courts and the Afro-Portuguese Olifant of the late 1400s – Rita Costa-Gomes

The Knowledge and Use of the ‘Teachings of Saint Louis’ in Fourteenth-Century England – Frédérique Lachaud

Philip of Chieti in Flanders, 1303-1305 – Jean Dunbabin

The Last Week of the Life of Edward, the Black Prince – Paul H W Booth

Tournament Culture in the Low Countries and England – Mario Damen

Conclusions – John L Watts

About the author

Mario Damen is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Amsterdam.