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Apparently, some neat theories don't work out



Sometimes a great theory and its believers are like the parties to a marriage that fails after just a year or two. Maybe the two of them always looked great together, they seemed to be destined for a life together.

But when they break up, the have to pick up the pieces and face their respective post-destiny lives.

So it has been with one of my favorite theories of medieval history (yes, I have a top ten list in my mind of favorite theories of medieval history -- doesn't everybody? -- this one is my fourth). Associated with the Stanford University historian Lynn White, the theory posits that the invention of the stirrup, a neat way of maintaining the balance of the rider of a horse, was critical to the development of the feudal system.

It was an adventurous speculation. The stirrup made possible shock combat (riders aiming lances at one another); the new form of combat required an infrastructure, armorers, pages, and so forth. The good lance bearers became knights, the low but critical rung in the developing aristocracy. The cause-effect chain gets more adventurous from there.

I loved the theory. I'm a sucker for technological determinisms.

But I've exchanged thoughts on this subject with a gentleman with an MA in archeology from Boston University, and he tells me that the stirrup theory hasn't held up.

Apparently, there ARE still people in the world who are good at "shock combat" on horses. One finds them after all at King Richards' Fairs. They do the jousting. Some medievalists have actually gotten them to joust alternately with and without stirrups: for the sake of science. The conclusion (in the concise summary of my online friend), "the stirrup doesn't actually provide that much of an advantage to the user."

Ah, a beautiful theory meets a nasty end at the hands of a ruthless fact.
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