The results of medieval engineering still surround us - cathedrals, castles, stone bridges, irrigation systems. However, the siege artillery, siege towers, temporary bridges, earthwork emplacements and underground mines used for war have left little trace behind them; and there is even less of the engineers themselves: the people behind the military engineering achievements. The evidence for this neglected group is studied here. The author begins by considering the evolution of military technology across centuries, and the impact of new technologies in the context of the economic and social developments which made them possible. He looks at how military engineers obtained their skills, and the possible link with scholastic scientific awareness. With the increased survival of government records from the middle ages, engineers acquire names and individuals can be identified. And the fifteenth century - the age of polymaths such as Leonardo da Vinci - saw a new type of literate military engineer, part of a recognized profession, but with its roots in a thousand years of historical development.
Author(s): Peter Purton
Series: Armour and Weapons, 7
Publisher: The Boydell Press
Year: 2018
Language: English
Pages: 366
City: Woodbridge
List of figures vii
Acknowledgements ix
Preface xi
Abbreviations xiv
1. Military Engineers in the Middle Ages 1
2. Late Antiquity and the Early “Middle Ages”: Were the “Dark Ages” Really Dark? 20
3. Anonymous but Effective: The Engineers and Technicians of the Ninth to Eleventh Centuries 76
4. The Engineer Recognised 107
5. Engineers in Demand: Innovation and Development in the Thirteenth Century 151
6. Old and New Technology and its Operators in the Fourteenth and Early Fifteenth Centuries 202
7. Polymaths and Specialists in the Fifteenth Century 234
Postscript: from Medieval to (Early) Modern in the Sixteenth Century 274
Appendix: Military Engineers and Miners in the Pipe Rolls of the English Exchequer 280
Glossary 285
Bibliography of Primary Sources 289
Bibliography of Secondary Sources 304
Index 337
