ABSTRACT
Defining warfare, delineating it from other forms of violence, is problematic for the period 1100–1700 ce. In the early Middle Ages, there was no concept of war as the sole prerogative of a sovereign body: that concept developed over time. This makes it much harder to analyse how contemporary sources classified armed conflicts. Maurice Keen suggests that warfare encompassed not only the great confrontations between rival regional political and religious authorities, but descended all the way down the scales of dominance and discord to small-scale armed conflicts between petty local lords jostling for political influence and temporary economic advantage. 1 Nor is it easy to categorize warfare in this period into, for example, wars about religion, wars of conquest or wars fought defensively. Sustained fighting on a substantial scale required greater resources than were available to most authorities on their own: that deficiency was frequently remedied by a series of ad hoc alliances with others of similar mind, or simply with their own self-interests to prosecute. This made it more difficult to obtain a lasting resolution to a conflict that resulted in warfare; while the original dispute might be settled, warfare might continue over what were originally extraneous matters. Quite often, therefore, underlying causes of warfare, such as rivalries over religious authority, political power and economic privileges became entangled. 2
