In "Saints and Sinners on Horseback" Volume I, we meet saints, sinners, and their horses, mules, and donkeys on the road. Whether saint, sinner, or simply all too human, the medieval individual's connection to equids reflected relationships with other animals, the rest of humanity, and with the deity. Knowledge of horses permeated hagiographies and homilies, histories and biographies. Equids were recruited in commentaries on morality and Christian duty. In a world in which equids are not so readily encountered, "Saints and Sinners on Horseback" informs the modern reader about the essential part played by horses in medieval life, literature, and belief.



Dr. Miriam A. Bibby FSA Scot is an equine historian, author, and editor. She is Vice President of the Equine History Collective, an international group of equine history scholars, and co-editor-in-chief of Cheiron, the International Journal of Equine and Equestrian History. Miriam has worked as an academic, museum curator, and heritage consultant. This is the second volume in Trivent's Rewriting Equestrian History series that she has edited, and two more are forthcoming.



Foreword by Francis Young Introduction by Miriam A. Bibby PROLOGUE Horse Stealing in Early Modern England: A Shropshire Case of 1606 Peter Edwards PART 1: The Horse and the World: Cultivated Clerics and Loving Couples CHAPTER 1. Morality Tales and Misadventure: Horses in Medieval Ecclesiastical Writings Jurg Gassmann CHAPTER 2. Saint George on Horseback on Fifteenth-Century Bone Saddles Virag Somogyvari PART 2: Equine Miracles and Wonders CHAPTER 3. Horse Slobber and Sacred Relics: The Role of Constantine's Horse in the Old English Elene Kathryn E. O'Toole CHAPTER 4. Sar? Saltuk and His Horses: Horses as Ways of Accessing Different Planes in Medieval Turkish Heroic Narrative Mihajlo Bozovic PART 3: The Horse in Hagiography CHAPTER 5. Horses in a Christian Context: The Evidence of Saint Basil the Great Alexia-Foteini Stamouli CHAPTER 6. Companions of God and Justice Bringers: Horses in Early Medieval Hagiography from Gaul and Italy Andrea Maraschi CHAPTER 7. Where Hagiography Meets Hippology: Hans Mielich's Ligsalz Epitaph (1550) Pia F. Cuneo PART 4: Riders at the Margin: Sinners and the Sinned Against CHAPTER 8. Sexuality, Alterity, and Riding in Thietmar's Chronicon Chris Halsted CHAPTER 9. 3000 Miles to Rouen: Joan of Arc on Horseback Scott Manning ENVOI Race With the Devil: Tam O'Shanter and the Dissident Demons of Speed Miriam A. Bibby Notes on Contributors