Why War Revealed Nothing

Abstract

In the previous chapters we saw that early modern combatants did not write stories of revelation in war, and did not view themselves as flesh-witnesses. We also saw that this was not because early modern Europe lacked the necessary cultural resources. In fact, quite a few cultural resources — such as religious conversion narratives, the macabre and Pieta images — could potentially have been employed to portray war as a revelatory experience. It is impossible to give an exhaustive causal explanation why early modern combatants “missed” that potential. The present chapter tries to clarify matters a bit by explaining what alternative stories early modern combatants chose to tell about war.