What is violence? The word is derived from Latin violentia, itself from vis = force. The term usually denotes either great or excessive force as well as constraint. The diverse and multiple ways in which various societies handle violence, today as in the past, make us aware of the internal and external problems of men and women living with foreigners and with one another. We notice that at the dawn of the twenty-first century we are not as civilized as we may envision ourselves as being, when we encounter xenophobia, adolescent brutality, private vengeance, and domestic abuse, for example. The threat of chemical warfare, hurricanes, floods, wars, holocausts, road rage, and the easy availability of guns and drugs—all present dangers of violent consequences, as attested in daily news media. Often, violence engenders violence.

It is no wonder, then, that the last two congresses on Fifteenth-Century Studies had multiple sessions on “Violence in Fifteenth-Century Text and Image.” We have selected the best papers for a collection of essays on this evocative theme, essays which will interest the student of the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, the humanities, art history, sociology, anthropology, and even the general public. In addition, we have invited some experts in the field of violence studies to contribute their latest research on the subject. By chapters, we highlight medieval warfare and justice, violence in family and milieu (court, town, village, and forest), ethnocentricity and xenophobia, the relation between the genders and sexual violence, brutality in hagiography and historiography, both in literature and on the stage, and the relationship between text and image (for example, violence depicted graphically, in color, stone, or wood).

During the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, the increasing confidence, wealth, and power of some European countries resulted in extraordinary campaigns of aggression against their neighbors. In addition, remarkable trading exploration was often backed up by force, deep into the sub-Arctic and Atlantic. It is sometimes forgotten, for example, that the Americas were discovered by Europeans who still believed in conquest and slavery. Wendy Childs explains that in commerce and trade, contraction occurred in the first part of the fifteenth century because of demographic changes, bullion shortages, and wars, while, beginning in the 1460s, this crisis was mitigated with the opening of sea routes to Africa and Asia, culminating in the discovery of America.