Conference

Towns were producers, organisers, and brokers of martial culture within the rapidly changing political world of late medieval Europe. Towns’ defences against and participation in local, regional and extra regional conflicts shaped military organisation and urban martial culture. This martial culture developed at the intersection of legal prerogatives, political requirements, physical skills, knowledge, and the evolving societal significance of the ownership and use of weapons. Based on the preliminary findings of the research project “Martial Culture in Medieval Towns” (University of Bern, funded by SNF 2018-22), this conference aims to:

• Firmly establish martial culture as indispensable part of comparative urban (communal) history.
• Establish urban military history as part of general military history of the middle ages and early modern period (13th-16th), in an international perspective.
• Emphasize the crucial part towns played in late medieval /early modern developments of the (fiscal, military…) state.
• Establish venues for comparative history by connection regional studies within international historiography, general, urban, and military history

The conference is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation Grant, the Burgergemeinde Bern, and the Historische Institut, Abteilung Mittelalter of the University of Bern.