Introduction: War and Peace in the Late Middle Ages

Abstract

Whither just war? It is a question scholars and activists have been asking with particular intensity and reappraisal in the last two generations. We turn here to the late medieval period, especially around the time when Muslim forces finally achieved in 1453 an earlier goal: the occupation of Constantinople. This fifteenth-century event, along with the decades before and after, focused the 19th biennial meeting of the American Cusanus Society and the International Seminar on Pre-Reformation Theology held at United Lutheran Seminary in Gettysburg PA during the autumn of 2023. Three panels of papers and two workshops on texts studied war, peace, and religious violence. While participants looked closely at the life and works of Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464), they also considered major events during the long late Middle Ages in Europe and the Middle East. The goal was to reevaluate options and actions for war and peace during this crucible moment in history with an eye toward applying historical lessons. This special issue features five articles that grew out of presentations at the 2023 conference by emerging and established scholars; the sixth is on a related topic (by this author). The journal articles in this special issue continue the prolific publication record of the American Cusanus Society, which since 1991 has published, mostly with Brill, over a dozen volumes of essays originating with papers from the Society’s Gettysburg conferences as well as the annual meetings of the Renaissance Society of America and the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University and Leeds.