The Last Duel, or was it? With Ariella Elema

For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to https://swordschool.com/podcast/the-last-duel-or-was-it-with-ariella-elema/ 

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Dr Ariella Elema is a finder of the forgotten, the hidden and the obscure. She's an academic and archivist and an armizare practitioner in Toronto. Her Ph.D. thesis, Trial by Battle in France and England, should give you some clue as to why I invited her on the show. But it also won the Canadian Society of Medievalists’ Leonard Boyle dissertation prize, which is very impressive.

In our conversation we talk about trial by combat, trial by ordeal, and the film, The Last Duel. Was it actually the last duel? There are some fascinating insights from Ariella on how a trial by combat would come about, who got to participate in such trials, and how they didn’t necessarily end with any fighting taking place. You need to listen to hear Guy’s take on the German version of the trials: “It's like medieval, gimp-suited, mud wrestling, basically.”

Here are some images of the Baculus Cornutus:

Alençon, Bibliothèque municipale MS 96, folio 63v. From the second half of the twelfth century.

British Library, Smithfield Decretals, MS Royal 10 E IV, folio 96v (detail). Circa 1300-1340.

York Minster Cathedral, Saint William Window, Corpus vitrearum medii aevi no. 010564. Circa 1414.

Here is a video lecture Ariella did for Middle Ages for Educators, called Anatomy of a Duel, about the case of Jean de Carrouges versus Jacques Le Gris, a lawsuit that occurred in Paris in 1386. It’s the subject of the book The Last Duel by Eric Jager, and also of the movie The Last Duel directed by Ridley Scott. This will spoil the movie for you. (Please note, it’s a discussion of a prosecution for rape and some fairly graphic violence.)

https://youtu.be/kxQa1Su-0F4

 

Ariella is on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ariellaelema