Amputation and Warfare in the Eleventh Century: Absence, Sensation, and Embodiment

Medieval European narrative sources reference battles, rebellions, and skirmishes, yet they typically report outcomes rather than experiences. Leaving aside the politics of medieval European warfare, this essay asks how medieval men experienced violent conflict and, more particularly, how they subsequently lived in wounded or disfigured bodies. Beginning with the brief report of a German man whose foot and lower leg were severed in battle in 1026, we explore various aspects of the wounded man’s experience from the perspective of sensory studies, focusing particularly on the multifaceted significance of Conrad II’s (r. 1024–1039) gift to him: coin-filled leggins (greaves) that both implied a prosthetic and compensated financially for the limb. Considering the man’s ‘absent’ foot and its simulated presence in the coin-filled leggins raises productive questions about embodiment, sensory experience, absence, and presence that form the backdrop to the cluster of essays that follows.