MEDIEVAL CHIVALRY
Dr. Richard Abels,
The
Medieval chivalry is best
defined as an aristocratic ethos that prescribed what qualities and attributes
a knight ought to possess, and which helped distinguish the military
aristocracy of
Medieval chivalry, or at least
the nineteenth-century understanding of it, has influenced modern, romantic
conceptions of honor, especially military honor. Marine Corps seems
especially attune to this, as evidenced by its recruiting commercials: 'Once
there were men who knew the meaning of honor [visual: closeup
of a knight and his sword]--there still are, the Marines! [knight's sword
becomes Marine sword, closeup of a Marine]. The ideal
of chivalry has attracted generations of young people to the military life. It
underlies such movies as "An Officer and a Gentleman," "Top
Gun," and even "Rambo."
Chivalry, in each of its
incarnations, is an ethical system that emphasizes personal honor. As Maurice Keen wrote: "the most important
legacy of chivalry to later times was its conception of honour ... Transaction
of honour, a contemporary anthropologist has said, 'provide ... a nexus between
the ideals of society and their reproduction in the actions of
individuals--honour commits men to act as they should'... Chivalry's most
profound influence lay in just this, in setting the seal of approbation on
norms of conduct, recognized as noble when reproduced in individual act and style."
(Chivalry 249) Chivalry helped fashion the nineteenth-century ideal of
the 'gentleman,' in which concepts of courtliness/courtesy,
skills in games and war, courage (especially in combat), loyalty to friends, personal honor (public
approbation/esteem tied to the avoidance of anything shameful and commitment to
doing the right thing, even if it meant risking life and limb), the idea of the 'constant quest to improve on
achievement' (M. Keen 15), and individualism
were tied together. Chivalry also shaped one aspect of romantic love: the idea
that the male could win/be worthy of his 'lady love' by winning approbation
through noble/honorable acts.
I. POPULAR
MODERN CONCEPTION OF CHIVALRY AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO MEDIEVAL CHIVALRY. Chivalry today is often used as a term for “gentlemanly”
behavior, manifested through courtesy toward the 'fair sex,’ honor,
courage, loyalty, physical prowess (the Marine Corps commercials), fighting
'fair' (movies in which hero disarms opponent during a duel, only to hand him
back his sword--parodied in Monty Python).
The modern popular idea of
'chivalry' derives from a Romantic image of the Middle
Ages created in the late eighteenth century by novelists such as Sir Walter
Scott (Ivanhoe) and developed in the nineteenth-century by gentlemen
enthusiasts such as Kenelm Henry Digby
and artists such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the pre-Raphaelites. It
reflected dissatisfaction with modernity, a repudiation of the Enlightenment
ideas of rationality, progress, and science and the French revolutionary ideals
of liberty, equality, and fraternity. "Chivalry" was associated with
nostalgia for a passing or passed age of aristocratic sensibility. This is what
Edmund Burke meant when he wrote of the beheading of Marie Antoinette:
I
thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge
even a look that threatened her [Marie Antoinette, the French Queen] with
insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters,
economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of
In
Historical evaluation of
the popular conception:
This Romantic conception of chivalry influenced the views on the subject even
by professional academic historians in the first half of the twentieth century,
who tended to idealize chivalry. Sidney Painter’s French Chivalry: Ideals and Practices in Mediaeval France (1957) is
perhaps the best book on chivalry in the traditional vein (even though
Painter’s understanding of chivalry was much more sophisticated and
infinitely more nuanced than that of Gautier).
The reason that Painter, one
of the finest historians of his generation, could be influenced by the Romantic
conception of chivalry is that this conception is broadly correct and is
derived from the sources. But, as Painter understood, the popular conception of
chivalry as the code of a “gentleman” in the modern sense of that
word misstates and misinterprets the purposes and meaning of chivalry. Chivalry
was an aristocratic ethos, a mode of
behavior that distinguished the European nobility from their social inferiors.
In the Middle Ages to be a "gentle man" was a matter of birth rather
than behavior. Courtesy meant proper behavior at court; it included the ability
to please and amuse ladies, but the operant word here is "ladies"
(it's a class thing). Loyalty and faith were essential elements, but chivalric
loyalty was feudal and Christian. More recent historians such as John Gillingham, David Crouch, Matthew Strickland, Maurice Keen,
and Richard Kaeuper have challenged the Victorian
conception of chivalry in more basic ways.
Perhaps the most important
insight made by modern historians, beginning with Painter and elaborated upon
by both Keen and Kaeuper, is that chivalry was a
contested ethos. There was never one agreed upon “code of
chivalry.” For some recent historians “chivalry” is best
understood as a modern historical construct, not unlike
“feudalism.” In the words of Constance Bouchard,
There
was no single standard (or “code”) which people of the [twelfth
century] always meant when they referred to chivalrous (or courteous) behavior.
… In fact, the idea of a fixed “code of chivalry” which
medieval aristocrats all knew and tried to observe is a modern, not a medieval
invention. Some idealized standard for aristocrats first appeared in literary
works at the very beginning of the twelfth century (about a hundred years after
the appearance of knights and castles) and had become a common motif by the
last decades of that century, but there were no conscious attempts to create
explicit definitions of chivalry
until the second half of the thirteenth century. … [However] over the
course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries both the authors of the
literature and the nobles themselves seemed to be moving toward a vague
consensus. (Bouchard, Strong of Body 104,
109)
This “vague
consensus” included a set of qualities generally acknowledged as
enhancing the honor (public reputation) of a knight and necessary for him to be
deemed a preudomme
(the most common term used to designate a chivalric knight): prowess, loyalty,
courage, courtesy, mesure (self
restraint), a concern for honor, and
piety. Chivalric qualities, however, could and did come into conflict and in
those cases which of them ought to take precedence was a matter of discussion
and debate. Essentially, each medieval author of a romance, chanson de geste (epic poem), or
handbook of chivalry had his or her own conception of what ‘perfect
chivalry’ entailed. The success of that author depended on how well he or
she could convince the target audience, a noble court, of the rightness of that
conception. Again, rather than think of
“chivalry” as an established 'code,' it is best to understand it as
an evolving and disputed ethos that lacked a single agreed upon meaning. The
advocates of royal and clerical authority tried to shape it, but the ultimate
shapes that it took in practice were due to the choices made by the knights
themselves.
II. BASIC
CONCEPTS AND TERMS FOR MEDIEVAL CHIVALRY:
The
knight (heavily
armored horse soldier serving a lord, a member of the medieval nobility). In
the ideal twelfth-century tripartite division of society, knights were
"those who fight for us.”
Although the Latin term miles
(literally, ‘soldier’), usually translated in the medieval context
as ‘knight,’ had a functional connotation in the tenth and eleventh
centuries, denoting a man who fought on horseback, by the early twelfth century
knighthood had become associated with nobility. In thirteenth-century
Feudalism: much debated historical construct of
a socio-political system characterized by a warrior ruling elite bound to one
another hierarchically through a web of personal bonds (lordship) reinforced by
tenurial bonds (fiefs, i.e. property held by a subordinate noble (‘vassal’)
from a superior, his lord, in return for the service, in particular the service
of an owed quota of knights). Medieval historians now tend to avoid the term
‘feudalism.’
Courtesy: behavior and manners appropriate to
members of a court.
Reciprocity (ethos that obliges people to treat
others as they themselves have been treated: benefit friends, injure enemies);
Honor (one's public status, reputation--also
refers to one's lands and rights).
Basic medieval framework:
hierarchy, custom/tradition, corporate rather than individualistic,
Christianity, personal rather than abstract relations
III. MEDIEVAL MEANINGS OF
'CHIVALRY', c. 1100-c.1500
1. The term 'chivalry' derives
from the French word for knight, chevalier, an aristocratic
warrior, presumably of noble-birth, equipped with heavy armor and warhorse.
The warhorse is essential; the literal meaning of chevalier is horsemen.
Medieval chivalry was a) martial, b) aristocratic, c) courtly. It also was French.
Though the 'code of chivalry' prevailed throughout Western Europe in the
thirteenth through fifteenth centuries, it was
2. The earliest usage of
'chivalry' (in eleventh- and early twelfth-century texts) was to denote the
collective body of chevaliers. The "chivalry" of a prince was the
troop of knights who served him. By extension, "chivalry" denoted the
knighthood as a separate and specific order within the Christian community.
In the latter sense "the chivalry" was synonymous with knighthood.
3. By the early twelfth century the term 'chivalry' also came to
stand for the values, ethos, and manners appropriate to the knightly class. These
mores derived from 1) feudal obligations, 2) demands made by life
in princely courts, 3) the teachings of the Christian clergy. By the
late twelfth century and early thirteenth century the ideal of the loyal,
courageous, and effective warrior had been refashioned into the IDEAL OF THE
KNIGHTLY COURTIER--MANNERS, ELOQUENCE, URBANITY, MUSICAL AND LINGUISTIC ABILITY,
AND KNOWLEDGE OF HOW TO SPEAK TO AND PLEASE LADIES became essential aspects of
the chivalric knight (see Gottfried von Strassburg's
Tristan, c. 1210, and the works of Chretien de Troyes, e.g. Yvain, ca. 1180).
4. FULL-BLOWN MODEL OF
CHIVALRIC VALUES, ETHICS, AND MORALS (fusion of feudal/martial, courtly, and
Christian values): RAYMOND LULL (1235-1315), courtier, poet, theologian,
mystic, and missionary, SUMMED UP the qualities of the Chivalric
knight in his BOOK ON THE ORDER
OF CHIVALRY (ca. 1270). The right reason to become a knight is to do
right; the wrong reason is for advantage and rank. A proper
chivalric knight MUST be 1. able-bodied; 2. of good lineage; 3. have
sufficient wealth to support his rank; 4. wise (to judge his inferiors
and supervise their labors; to advise his lord); 5. generous (holds
open house within the limits of his means); 6. loyal; 7. courageous;
8. honorable. His ethical duties are 1. to defend the
Christian faith, 2. to defend his lord, 3. to protect the weak
(women, children); 4. to exercise constantly by hunting and jousting in
tournaments; 5. to judge the people and supervise their work (the knight
acts here as a royal agent and servant); 6. to pursue robbers and
evil-doers. A chivalrous knight must avoid 1) pride, 2)
lechery, 3) false oaths, 4) and especially treachery (=betraying
one's lord, sleeping with his wife, or surrendering his castle).
5. LATE MEDIEVAL CHIVALRY.
The basic aspects of thirteenth-century chivalry remained unchanged into the
sixteenth century. The 'practice' of chivalry, however, became more and more
elaborate. Tournaments evolved from war games into pageants, princes created
chivalric orders with elaborate ceremonies, rituals, and show, noble lineage
was emphasized through the science of heraldry, and the chivalric knight
conformed to a model of behavior that, as one historian put it, was
'exhibitionist and extravagant--often to the point of vulgarity.' BUT the 15th
and 16th centuries were still an age in which ritual was vital to expressing
social obligations. The flamboyance and munificence of the displays, moreover,
was an expression of the dignity of the noble estate; it reflected in economic
terms a growing divide between a small noble elite of vast wealth and a much
larger petty nobility that sought to make up for sagging seigneurial
revenues through service in court (pensions, wages, livery, gifts). It also
emphasized the gulf in values between those who fought and those who worked,
even if the latter happened to be wealthier than the former.
6. MEDIEVAL CHIVALRY fused
three essential aspects of medieval knighthood: WAR, CHRISTIANITY, NOBILITY.
IV. HISTORICAL CONTEXT
FOR THE FORMATION OF THE FRENCH KNIGHTHOOD: THE THUGARCHY BECOMES A
SELF-CONSCIOUS ARISTOCRACY.
1. By the year 1000 churchmen
such as Bishop Adalbero of Laon had divided
Christian society into three orders based upon function: those who pray (for
us), those who fight (for us), and those who work (for us). The second of
these "orders" (or "estates," as they were to be called in
2. The knighthood as a social
class/order (as opposed to a theoretical construction) came into being in
France during the course of the eleventh century through the fusion of
two groups: a) the great magnates who claimed descent from the Carolingian
(i.e. Charlemagne's) nobility (termed nobiles)
and who possessed enormous landed wealth; b) a petty nobility of
warrior-retainers (milites), whose
"freedom" (i.e., privileges and exemptions from tribute and labor
services) derived from the military service they rendered to the magnates. By
1100 in much of
3. The historical context for
the fusion of these groups into the "knighthood" was the emergence of
the heavily armored horse soldier as the dominant force in warfare ca. 1000.
This was a byproduct of the adoption of the stirrup in the 8th century,
which permitted horse soldiers to become effective shock troops, and of the
reorganization of political society along local regional lines as a consequence
of the collapse of central authority in the tenth century under the pressure of
the Viking invasions. Power was based, ca. 1000 in France, upon the possession
of a castle and the military resources to garrison it, to keep the local
peasantry in line, and to defend one's 'lordship' (the territory controled by the castle) against other predators. The
result was a sort of 'thugarchy' in which landed
noblemen relied upon warrior retainers, often household men, to dominate and
exploit the peasants. Thus the lord's knights would conduct cavalcades
upon horseback through the villages 'to show the flag' to the peasants.
4. The horse as a symbol of
nobility is understandable in light of the cost of specially bred
warhorses (a warhorse in the 15th century cost a knight the equivalent of
six-month wages in royal service) and of the training necessary to fight
effectively on horseback.
5. By 1100 the 'thugarchy' had stabilized. Nobles tied themselves
hierarchically to one another through the bonds of feudalism, which
complemented and even superseded ties of kinship. The result was a political
society of aristocratic, warrior landholders who formed a nobility of
service. Every nobleman held land from a superior, whom he served in war.
In theory noble society was stratified into various levels--king,
dukes/earls/counts, viscounts, barons, landed knights, household knights--, but
the reality was a fluid society in which one's status derived not only from
birth and personal qualities but from the ability to maintain and increase
familial wealth and resources.
6. The medieval knight,
then, was above all else, a horseman, a soldier, a retainer (vassal), and a
nobleman. Chivalry was the code of behavior of this class. In essence, it
represents the ethos of a military, Christian aristocracy.
7.
Chivalry helped differentiate the military, landed aristocracy from the
wealthy burghers of the new towns/cities that were emerging in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. Interestingly, in
The knight's hostility to the merchant
and to his commercial ethos is best represented by the Poitevin baron-troubador Bertran de Born (ca. 1185): "And it will be good to live [when the princes go
to war], for one will take the property of usurers and there will no longer be
a peaceful pack-horse on the roads, all the townsmen will tremble; the merchant
will no longer be safe on the road to France."
BUT one must distinguish here between the
public ethos of knights and barons and the actual attitudes and economic
practices of the great twelfth- and thirteenth-century barons. Historian David
Crouch points out that early in the twelfth century “the highest of
Norman aristocrats, Waleran, count of Meulan, did not
find it beneath him to take an active interest in the wine trade which passed
through his lands on the way to
V. THE
FORMATION OF CHIVALRIC VALUES
1. THE MARTIAL/FEUDAL
ELEMENT: LOYALTY AND PROWESS. Chivalric values reflected the needs of a
feudal society. The key values here was loyalty, specifically loyalty to
one's lord, and martial skill. In the central ritual of feudalism, the ceremony
of homage and fealty, a vassal (subordinate noble) swore on holy relics
to be loyal to his lord. This pledge of loyalty often occurred within
the context the acceptance of a fief, i.e. land or some other source of
revenue held by a vassal from his lord in return for specified military
service. An important point to be made here is that the lord-vassal
relationship was governed by the ethos of reciprocity. One ought not to
think of the bond as contractual; rather it established a social relationship
of 'friendship,' of mutual aid and benefits.
PROWESS meant the ability to fight well on
horseback, a critically important quality in this society of warrior retainers.
The measure of a chivalrous knight was his ability to fight and his willingness
to subordinate his own will and interests to those of his sworn lord. The
highest compliment that could be paid to a knight was to call him preux, a man of proved prowess. This aspect of
chivalry had its own poet, the late twelfth-century troubadour knight Bertran de Born. One of his poems, “War
Cry,” expresses well the love of violence that a knight was supposed to
have:
And it pleases me too
when a lord is first to the
attack on his horse, armed,
without fear; for thus he
inspires his men with valiant
courage. when the battle is
joined, each man must be
ready to follow him with
pleasure, for no one is
respected until he has taken
and given many blows.
At the beginning of the
battle we shall see clubs
and swords, colorful
helmets, shields pierced
and smashed, and many
vassals striking together, so
that horses of the dead and
wounded will wander
aimlessly. And when he
enters the fray, let every
man of rank think only of
hacking heads and arms,
for a dead man is worth
more than a live loser.
I tell you, eating or drinking
or sleeping hasn't such
savor for me as the
moment I hear both sides
shouting "Get 'em!" and I
hear riderless horses
crashing through the
shadows, and I hear men
shouting "Help! Help!" and
I see the small and the
great falling in the grassy
ditches, and I see the dead
with splintered lances,
decked with pennons,
through their sides.
The importance of prowess
cannot be overemphasized. In all models of medieval chivalry, whether
aristocratic, clerical, or royal, prowess is an essential characteristic. As
both Maurice Keen (Chivalry) and Richard Kaeuper
(Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe) observe, chivalry was not an attempt to end violence but to channel it. In doing
so, it legitimized violence.
LOYALTY.
The reason that loyalty was emphasized was that, in
practice, the interests of a lord and his vassals often came into conflict.
This was especially true among lords and their landed vassals. In a world that
had no effective central authority to enforce contracts, trustworthiness was a
key value. In the homage and fealty ceremony vassals pledged their loyalty upon
holy relics in an attempt to reinforce the public promise through supernatural
sanctions. Modern marriage, in which spouses pledge lifelong fidelity to one
another in the presence of God, provides a good analogy here. Because marital
fidelity is a matter of individual choice and is not enforced by the state
through its laws and police, adultery is not uncommon in our society, though it
may be looked upon with disapproval. Nor are marriages always for life, no
matter what has been pledged during the marriage ceremony. Similarly, feudal
loyalties were often ignored as nobles pursued their own familial interests,
and, on occasion, the lordship bond itself was renounced. "
2. THE COURTLY COMPONENT:
COURTLINESS (CORTOISIE), MODERATION,
AND LARGESSE. Chivalric values also reflect the needs of a courtly
society. The 12th century witnessed the rebirth of court life. This new
culture of the court meant that the knight had to know how to conduct himself
in the drawing room as well as on the battlefield. A "gentle man,"
a man of noble birth, now came to mean a courtly man, one who knows how to behave
politely as befits a courtier. The skills of the chivalrous knight: kill one's
enemy and please the ladies.
The qualities of
courtliness. Courtesy, or courtliness, was the behavior deemed
proper for court life. The
central ideal was "elegance/beauty
of manners" (Gottfried of Strassburg, Tristan), the elements of
which were SELF-RESTRAINT, CALCULATED UNDERPLAYING OF TALENTS (the point of
which is to magnify these accomplishments by first concealing and then
minimizing them, so that onlookers will respond with awe and admiration),
CONSIDERATENESS, AFFABILITY, GENTLENESS OF SPIRIT/HUMILITY (mansuetudo:
benevolent passivity to friends and foes alike, willingness to suffer abuse
patiently, an affectation of humility associated with aristocratic deference (source
was Cicero) ELOQUENCE, SKILL IN LANGUAGES AND MUSIC. (N.B. similarity to Castiglione's courtier;
Renaissance did NOT invent the 'courtier'!)
3. CHRISTIAN CHIVALRY. The
Christian contribution to chivalry involved the redefinition of warfare and knighthood.
The Peace and Truce of God movement of the tenth and eleventh centuries
attempted to define peace as the natural condition of the Christian community.
War was to be limited both in scope and duration (selective pacifism).
The other side of the coin was Crusade, the sanctification of war against the
enemies of God (Holy War/Crusade).
Like the twelfth-century
kings, dukes, and counts, the Christian clergy were interested in domesticating
the military nobility and moderating their violence. The "New
Chivalry" (a term coined ca. 1128 by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the
great Cistercian abbot and Church reformer) were to be the soldiers of Christ:
the knight who fights for religion commits no evil but does good for his people
and himself. He dies a martyr and gains heaven; if he kills his opponent, he
avenges Christ. Win/win. The personification of the “New Chivalry”
for St. Bernard was the new Military
Orders of “monk-knights,” in particular the Order of the
Knights of the
Knightly
piety, however, differed
significantly from clerical piety, even St. Bernard’s ideal of the
“New Chivalry” and Ramon Lull’s more secularized version of
it. Certainly, knights felt the tension between the pull of chivalry, with its
emphasis upon prowess exhibited through warfare and in tournament, and the
clerical condemnations of both violence perpetrated upon other Christians,
whether in war or in tournaments. One of the explanations for the popularity of
Crusading among the medieval
nobility was that it was penitential warfare
that promised remission of sins not by renouncing violence but by directing
it against the enemies of God and the Church. The unease that nobles in the
late eleventh and twelfth centuries felt about engaging in noble pursuits such
as war, tournaments, feasting, and sexual liaisons that the clergy taught them
would condemn them to hell if left unatoned lay
behind the establishment of and patronage given to monasteries by these lords.
The expectation was that the monks would respond to the generosity of their
benefactors by naming them in their prayers and interceding with the
monastery’s saint on their behalf. Some nobles even sought to enter
monasteries in their old age or assume the monastic habit upon their deathbed
in order to be granted the privilege of being buried among the monks in the
monastic cemetery. Richard Kaueper has shown (Holy Warrior: The Religious
Ideology of Chivalry, 2009), however, that this unease is only one part of
the story. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the lay nobility
developed their own conception of “knightly piety” that valorized
all military service to lords, earthly as well as divine, as penitential. In
this ideology, the knight “imitated Christ” by exposing himself to
hardships, injury, and possible death in the performance of his knightly
duties. Twelfth- and thirteenth-century nobles, moreover, often regarded their
own order, ‘those who fight for us,’ as socially superior to the
clergy. Clergy and monks were looked down upon because they lacked masculine
chivalric qualities. The necessity of the sacraments for salvation was, of
course, acknowledged, but some nobles treated their household chaplains like
the ‘auto mechanics’ of the soul, as servants providing them with
spiritual tune-ups.
William Marshal’s
‘art of dying’ provides insight into the piety of one early
thirteenth-century English baron who during his life was considered to be
“the best knight in the world:
William Marshal (1147-1219) was an
English household knight who distinguished himself through his prowess in war
and in tournament and through a reputation for unfailing loyalty (see below,
section VII). Marshal’s loyal service to King Henry II earned him the
hand of a wealthy heiress, Isabel de Clare, from King Richard the Lionheart and
the title of Earl of Pembroke from King John. His loyalty to the latter led the
dying John to name William as guardian and regent to his young son King Henry
III. William proved successful in leading the armies of the young king to
success against the invading French. In March of 1219 William fell very ill.
Realizing that he was dying, William accompanied by his eldest son William and
his household knights retired to his estate at Caversham
(Oxfordshire), where he summoned a meeting of the
magnates of the realm, including Henry III, the papal legate, and the royal
justiciar (Hugh de Burgh), and Peter des Roches,
bishop of Winchester (the young king's guardian). Rejecting the bishop's claim
to the regency, William entrusted the young king into the care of the papal legate.
Marshal’s deathbed gifts to the
Church. Marshal during his life had founded three monasteries, two of them
in
Marshal
and the demands of the clergy
A
couple of weeks before he died, he was lying in bed surrounded by his household
knights. One of them, Henry fitzGerold reminded
William that he should be thinking about his soul and that the clerks taught
that one cannot be saved unless one gives back all that he has taken from
others. “Henry, do not be too hard on me,” responded William
Marshal, “the clerks are very severe on us and shave us too close. I have
captured 500 knights in my lifetime and have kept their arms, their charges and
their harness. But now I can do no more than give myself to God, repenting for
all the wrong that I have done. If God’s kingdom is withheld from me on
this account I must resign myself. Unless the monks wish to banish me
altogether, they must pursue me no further. Either their argument is false or
no man can be saved.” John of Earley responded to this, “what you
say is true and I can guarantee that not one of your neighbors could say as much
at the end of his life. Crosland 148-9.
The day before William died one of his
chaplains, Philip, advised him to sell his rich robes in the wardrobe and to
use the money for charity to benefit his soul. "Be silent mischievous
man," William berated the cleric. "You have not the heart of a
gentleman, and I have had too much of your advice. Pentecost is at hand, and my
knights ought to have their new robes. This will be the last time that I will
supply them, yet you seek to prevent me from doing it." Marshal then ordered
that more robes be purchased in
Marshal's
death
Midday
14 May 1219. To John of Earley: "Summon the countess and the knights, for
I am dying. I can wait no longer, and I wish to take leave of them." To
wife and household: "I am dying. I commend you to God. I can no longer be
with you. I cannot defend myself from death."
The abbot of
The body was carried to
Postscript: years later, about 1240 or so, the
body was moved and the tomb opened. The body was putrid with decay. Matthew
Paris, a monk and chronicler who wrote around 1260, regarded this as evidence
of William's sins. William Marshal had died an excommunicant
(by the Irish Bishop of Ferns). While John of Earley had no doubt about
William's final resting place, it is obvious that not all of his contemporaries
agreed.
VI. ORIGINS OF
COURTLY VALUES: HISTORICAL CONTEXT FOR CORTOISIE (COURTLINESS)
The emergence of
“courtly” aristocratic society in the second half of the twelfth
century.
By
the twelfth century feudal society revolved around the courts of kings, counts,
and other barons. These courts moved with the lord as he peregrinated through
his various estates and castles (a necessity for 1) keeping order and control,
and 2) for feeding a household that could number in the hundreds). A lord's
court included his close kin (wife, children, brothers--those who slept in the
chambers of the castle), other members of his household (bachelor knights,
chaplains, domestic servants), and landed vassals whom he had summoned to
escort or serve him. The status of a lord was reflected by the size and
magnificence of his household. Tournaments in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries were opportunities for lords to display their wealth and position.
Their social standing was enhanced by their displays, their largesse, and by
the success of their knights in the competition. Vassals, on the other hand,
earned these rewards through chivalric deeds and performances.
As David Crouch observed about
these knightly courtiers, “Ambition and the need for security were the
motivating forces that kept courtiers in attendance on their lord, and shaped
their behavior” (191). The twelfth century was a period of economic
growth and monetary inflation. The
higher nobility, kings, counts, dukes, earls, were able to benefit from these
economic changes, as they founded or improved towns and markets on their lands
and made arrangements with merchants that enriched both sides. It is little
wonder that among the greatest patrons of chivalry were the counts of Flanders
and Champagne, the former the center of a thriving textile industry, and the
latter, the setting for the great Fairs of Champagne at which merchants from
Flanders and Italy met and made commercial deals. Lesser noblemen, those with only one or a few
castles, on the other hand, lost out.
Because the rents they received from their tenants were fixed by custom,
they could not benefit from the rise in food prices and the growth of a
commodity market. Indeed, many converted their demesne lands into rented land
because they needed ready cash. The signs of nobility—clothing, food,
armor—had become more expensive at the same time that the lesser nobility
had become poorer. Many of these knights were much poorer than merchants and
other members of the urban patriciate, although they continued to view them as
“serfs” and “peasants.” (The troubadour knight Bertran de Born once again sums up the feelings of this
class of castellans: “It pleases me immensely when I see rotten rich people suffer,
the ones who make trouble for noblemen, and it pleases me when I see them
destroyed, twenty or thirty from day to day, when I find them without clothes,
and begging for bread. A peasant has the habits of a pig, for he is bored by
noble living; when a man rises to great riches, his wealth drives him mad. So
you must keep his pockets empty in all seasons, spend what's his, and expose
him to wind and rain. Whoever doesn't ruin his peasant sustains him in
disloyalty. So a man's a fool.”
The best economic hope for
these lesser nobles was the patronage of magnates, which is one reason that
even landed knights attended the courts of their lords. The greater the noble,
the more wealth and patronage he had at his disposal, and the more splendid the
court as measured by the quality of men he attracted to it.
An important obligation of
vassalage was attendance upon command in the lord's court (reflected in the
King Arthur stories). Vassals were supposed to provide their lords with good
advice and to help arbitrate disputes among the lords' vassals. Of equal
importance to the lord was keeping tabs on those to whom he had given land and
upon whose support he depended for his own security. In return for their good
service in court, knights could expect gifts and rewards. The greater the lord,
the greater his resources for patronage.
Landed vassals would come and
go, but the heart of the lord's court, other than his blood relations, was his
household (or bachelor) knights. These were often younger sons who inherited
status but not property; they served in hopes of earning rewards (gifts, robes,
horses, etc.) and, if very fortunate, fiefs. Great men, counts, dukes, and
earls, often counted lesser landed knights among their household retainers.
In addition to the household
knights one would also find young children in court. These were foster sons,
the children of other noblemen sent to the lord's court to learn the art of
being a knight. The ties of foster parentage created additional bonds that
supplemented those of kinship and feudalism.
Courts were supposed to reflect the power and glory of a lord. Those who
entered a noble's household came within the sphere of his protection. To injure
one under a lord's protection was to insult that lord. The problem faced by
lords was how to maintain peace and order within large households,
filled with belligerent young men competing with one another for favor. One
solution was to punish harshly those who broke the peace. Another was to
foster a code of behavior that was conducive to the maintenance of peace. Cortoisie (courtliness) was a set of behaviors
that permitted constant competition among young knights while restraining them
from killing each other. It moderated the ethos of revenge. It served to
domesticate the knights while preserving their martial values.
A. THE ROMANO-GERMAN
SOURCES OF COURTLINESS: CICERO REINTERPRETED: Though "courtesy" was associated strongly with
French culture in the twelfth and thirteenth century, recent research (by
Stephen Jaeger) has traced the origins of courtliness to German episcopal
courts (i.e. the households of bishops) in the tenth and eleventh
centuries. German bishops were imperial servants, who were trained for
their offices through service as chaplains in the emperor's household. Jaeger
summarized his views by saying: "courtliness is medieval
B. LARGESSE. Largesse meant generosity to one's
friends (lords, vassals, kinsmen, colleagues) and charity to the poor and the
Church. Generosity was an essential quality of the chivalric knight. It was
an ethical demand that arose from the ethos of reciprocity: friends were to be
rewarded and aided, just as wrongs were to be avenged and enemies hurt. It was
also an essential demand of courtly life. Lords imposed their will over their
men and demonstrated their power and authority through the distribution of
gifts and favors. Vassals, in turn, demonstrated their love of their lord and
gratitude for his favors by serving him loyally and by magnifying his
reputation through their deeds. The great English household knight William Marshal (1147-1219) was noted
for his spontaneous generosity; he acquired wealth in order to distribute it to
friends. Bertran de Born, Marshal's contemporary, wrote
poems in which he praised generosity above all other chivalric virtues except
for prowess (but, then again, he was of a class that depended upon the
patronage of counts and kings).
VII. PRACTICAL CHIVALRY IN
THE TWELFTH CENTURY: WILLIAM MARSHAL.
William Marshal was the fourth son of John fitz
Gilbert, hereditary marshal of--keeper of the horses-- of the Anglo-Norman kings
. William was born ca. 1147, John's second son by his second wife, Sybil (whom
he married in 1145), the sister of Earl Patrick of
William Marshal
has received a great deal of attention from modern historians; there have been
four major biographies of him since 1933. The reason for this is an
extraordinary primary source, the Histoire de
Guillaume le Marechal, a long (19,214 line)
poem composed by "John the Troubador" c.
1224-6 for William's son Earl William II. The poem had been long lost and was
only rediscovered in 1860. The author's intention, of course, was to
glorify William Marshal and to present him as the "flower of chivalry,"
and the reader of the poem needs to remember that this is a literary work
rather than an historical study. None the less, the author did the necessary
research, interviewing members of the dead Earl's mesnie (household),
most notably John of Earley (or Erley), William's
squire, household knight, and closest friend. He also appears to have consulted
charters and perhaps even contemporary chronicles. In short, this is an
extraordinary source, one of the few biographies of a non-king or non-saint
written in the thirteenth century, which explains why William has attracted so
much historical attention. Excerpts from this poem dealing with war and
tournaments are posted by the "De Re Militari Society"
(the Society's webpage is by far the
best online resource for medieval warfare). At present there is only a French
translation of the poem, but the first complete English translation by Stewart
Gregory with the assistance David Crouch has been published by the Anglo-Norman
Text Society.
The Histoire presents William Marshal as a preudomme, in the words of David
Crouch, as a “practised,
intelligent soldier and man of affairs” (Crouch 187). The poet (and undoubtedly William himself)
attributed his success to his possession of exceptional chivalric qualities.
Most visible were the feudal qualities: prowess and loyalty. William was an
exceptional warrior, who demonstrated his extraordinary prowess in combat (demonstrated both in tournaments and in
warfare). He also cultivated a reputation for loyalty by faithfully serving until the bitter end a series of
lords on the losing side. He was at the deathbeds of both the Young King Henry
and his father King Henry II, and in the case of the former, he even fulfilled
the Young King’s vow to go on crusade. (But see below for a more nuanced
view of Marshal’s vaunted loyalty.)
William’s “chivalry” was performed also in his
lords’ courts. The Histoire portrays
William as the consummate coutier. He is praised on
several occasions as corteis
(courtly), raisnables (reasonable in his behavior), and prudent or wise. He was affable
to his lords and his peers, and apparently was accomplished at telling
self-deprecating stories about his accomplishments (which both emphasized his
accomplishments and took the curse of them by laughing at himself). Above all
William demonstrated mesure, the quality of
self-restraint and moderation in word and deed—the quality that Raoul of Cambrai
so conspicuously lacked in the epic named after him. When asked to sing by a
group of ladies at a tournament, William, like Tristan in Gottfried von Strassburg’s poem, at first demurred but when he
finally gave him, he sang beautifully.
William demonstrated a different type of mesure in his dealings with King John. William came into conflict
with King John in 1204 because of William’s perceived double-dealing with
John’s enemy King Philip Augustus of
The
career of William Marshal reveals the complexities
of twelfth-century aristocratic society and the pragmatic aspects of chivalry. For the latter, we may consider two stories in the Histoire:
1. The author of the Histoire tells a story about how William
Marshal, on his way to rendezvous near
2.
In 1203-1204 King Philip Augustus of
VIII. TOURNAMENTS
A. BACKGROUND.
Although a staple of chivalric
literature. All of the Arthurian romances depict heroes as champions at
tourneys (e.g., Ywain). Although their were
probably similar sorts of war games in the 10th century, tournaments as such
seem to have arisen toward the end of the 11th or beg. of 12th century as part
of the developments that created the SECOND FEUDAL AGE. By 1125 tournamets were pop. in France (esp. northern
William Marshal's career reflects the importance of tournaments
for knights. The History of William the
Marshal mentions sixteen tournaments in which William participated between
1167 and 1183. As David Crouch points
out, most late twelfth-century tournaments were small scale, with about 20 or
so knights divided into two teams. William Marshal was a professional tournament knight. Between
1177 and 1179 he entered into a formal partnership with Roger de Gaugie, another
“bachelor” (landless knight) in the Young King Henry’s
household, to go on the tournament circuit and split their takings. According to a list kept by Wigain, the Young King's clerk, the two between them
captured 103 knights in the course of 10 months. In one tournament William
Marshal captured ten knights along with their twelve horses.
The great lords, such as the Counts of
Champagne and Flanders, gained reputation and prestige from their patronage of
tournaments, while the ordinary knights gained fame, glory, possibility of
material gain (in the form of horses, trappings, armor, and ransom)--or loss--,
and an arena in which to prove their worth to potential lords (for wh read 'employers'). TOURNAMENTS SERVED AS TRAINING
GROUNDS FOR WAR, AS OPPORTUNITIES FOR OBTAINING BOOTY AND PRESTIGE, AS SOCIAL GATHERINGS
OF THE ARISTOCRACY, AS ARENAS FOR THEATER, CEREMONY AND 'PLAY'. In essence, the
tournament helped the nobility to define itself, and changed as the nobility's
self image changed.
B.
EVOLUTION OF THE TOURNAMENT:
The history of the tournaments
mimics the social history of the medieval aristocracy. The tournment
of the twelfth century was largely a military affair, meant to give knights
practice in fighting in units. Actual battlefield tactics, based on CONROIS of
knights (cohesive, feudal tactical units) operating in conjuction
with FOOT-SOLDIERS, were employed. Tournaments of the 12th and 13th centuries
were dangerous and rough affairs--they were, in essence, war games meant to
reflect actual conditions of battlefield combat and were distinguishable from
actual warfare only by the presence of roped off 'refuges' where knights could
take time out to rest or repair their equipment. Otherwise, they were no holds
barred affairs. On occasion a tournament could even substitute for warfare. The
counts of
The 13th century witnessed a
gradual transformation in the tournament, as its pageantry began to become more
elaborate, and as JOUSTING began to complement the MELEE. THE EXPENSE OF
TOURNEYING ROSE AS THE TOURNAMENT BECAME 'THEATER', a public arena in which
barons could show-off their prowess, their chivalric qualities, and their
WEALTH. Feasts and pageantry (songs, dances, and formal processions) took up
more and more time, and the presence of ladies became an accepted and necessary
aspect of the games (knights by the middle of the thirteenth century would
fight bearing the sleeves of ladies). This added the proceedings an erotic
undercurrent, which might help explain the growing popularity of JOUSTING.
Jousting, which emphasized individual martial skills, did not prepare a soldier
as well for warfare as did the melee, but it did allow him to be the focus of attention
as he demonstrated his prowess. In essence, the purpose of the tournament
was changing. Though tournaments never completely lost their military
value, they became increasingly stages for chivalric pageantry, demonstrations
of chivalry and aristocracy. The tournament was the place in which a
nobleman could distinguish himself from a burgher.
This process is perhaps best
understood through a weird example, that of the Bavarian knight ULRICH VON
LICHTENSTEIN who wrote a pseudo-autobiography in which he described his
VENUSFAHRT (1227) and his ARTUSFAHRT (1240). For the former, he dressed up as
"Frau Venus", in full armor with woman's clothing over it, and
wearing a blong woman's wig. He travelled from
By the 14th century the
tournament had become theater as well as war-games, and by the 15th century the
tourn. had assumed a complex form with 3 distinct
types of combat: the joust, the melee, and the hand-to-hand combat on foot.
Jousts and hand-to-hand combat would either precede or follow the melee (known
as a tournoi). Jousts 'of peace', an
innovation of the thirteenth century, in which rebated lances were used, became
more and more popular. The object of such a joust was NOT to dismount one's
opponent but to splinter as many lances as possible. To protect the
participants tournament armor, which emphasized safety over mobility, was
employed, and, by the 16th century, the knight's saddle had become so high that
it virtually imprisoned him. Lance rests even obviated the need to lower one's
lance, and 'tilts' (barriers erected down the length of the lists, first
introduced ca. 1420) prevented knights from accidently running into one
another. This sort of joust remained popular into the 17th century, though the
death of Henry II of
The most 'chivalrous' as well
as artificial form taken by the tournament was the PAS D'ARMES, in which an
individual knight would make the beau geste of setting up a pavilion on a
cross-roads and challenge all who passed by to joust with them (parodied by the
Black Knight episode in Monty Python). An early form of the pas d'armes is described by Froissart. In March and April 1390
Marshal Boucicaut, the flower of French chivalry, and
two of his companions, bored out of his mind by a truce with the English, took
up residence for a month at St. Inglevert on the
frontier betw Boulogne and the English held town of
Calais. Three months before this they had sent out herald announcing their
intention to meet all challengers on any day except Friday. The challenger
could choose to fight with either pointed or abated lances. Each contest was to
last 5 tilts. Boucicaut set up four magnificent
tents, one reserved for the opponent, and placed on the branches of an oak tree
a shield with the coat of arms of the three French knights, a horn to summon
them from their tents, and a supply of blunted and pointed lances. All one had
to do was blow the horn, pick up a lance, and point to the coat of arms of the
opponent that one wished to fight. In the course of a month, the three knights
jousted against a total of 120 English knights and 40 knights from other lands.
Froissart says that the French knights wounded many challengers, though they
themselves emerged unscathed (and with a unmatched reputation for prowess and
chivalry).
The pas d'armes,
like the tournament itself, became more and more elaborate, as ceremony and
ritual came more and more to dominate it. The best example of this is the pas d'armes of the Flemish hero JACQUES DE LALAING, held
between 1 November 1449 and 1 October 1450. Jacques was the beau ideal of the Burgundian knight. He came from an ancient noble family
that had distinguished itself on the Crusade of St. Louis. He served Philip the
Good of Burgundy in the conquest of
In Nov 1448 Lalaing announced that he would set up a pavilion on the
C.
ATTEMPTS TO MODERATE VIOLENCE:
I. ROYAL ATTEMPTS. Popes and
kings were both made nervous by the popularity of tournaments. Kings saw such gatherings
as political threats. The dukes and counts who hosted tournaments used them as
opportunities to forge alliances and to solidify their hold over their own
vassals. They also provided the perfect cover for launching conspiracies. The
opponents of King John and of his son Henry III used tournies
to assemble their forces and to plan their rebellions. Kings also resented
having to compete with tournaments for their knights' service when they were
planning war. But royal opposition proved completely ineffectual, in part
because kings themselves were noblemen who, policy aside, enjoyed tournaments
and found them, at times, very useful. By the 14th century English and French
kings were staging tournaments in order to enhance their own royal prestige.
Still, even those kings and
princes who approved of tournaments were disturbed by their unrestrained
violence. Here they proved more successful. The curbing of the tournament's
violence is paralleled by the successful imposition of the 'king's peace'
throughout northern
a. In
i. use of special tournament armor of
padded leather and blunted (bated) weapons.
ii. JUDGES (diseurs)
who awarded special prizes to those who most distinguished themselves (e.g.
William Marshal's winning of a fish--a giant pike--at the tournament at Pleurs near
iii. Confined tournament
fields
iv. Presence of noble ladies
becomes a fixture at tournaments by the middle of the 13th century, as the
affectations of courtly love literature more and more influence the language
and ethos of chivalry.
v. The movement from melee to
jousting reduces the dangers of the tournament, especially with the increasing
popularity of jousts of peace.
b. ENGLISH KINGS IN 13TH
CENTURY TRIED TO CURB EXCESSES OF TOURNAMENTS. RICHARD THE LIONHEART (who loved
tournaments) tried to reduce the bloodshed by issuing rules and ordinances. RI
licensed tournaments at 5 specified areas, all in open countryside, and charged
a fee on all those participating--20 marks for an early, 10 for baron, 4 for
landed and 2 for landless knights. RI formed a baronial board of control, which
required all those participating to pay fees in advance and to swear to keep
the peace. EDWARD I at the end of the 13th century made the rules more
stringent, limiting number of followers that baron could bring, ordering the
use of only blunted ('bated') weapons, and insisting that grooms and footmen
carry only defensive weapons.
D.
ECCLESIASTICAL CONDEMNATION.
CHIVALRY CREATED TENSIONS IN
SOCIETY BECAUSE OF ITS MIXED ORIGIN. THE RELIGIOUS AND MARTIAL ASPECTS OF
CHIVALRY OFTEN DID NOT SIT WELL TOGETHER. This tension is best seen in the
debate over the TOURNAMENT.
CHURCH'S CONDEMNATION OF
TOURNAMENTS: Innocent II at Second Council of Clermont (1130) denounced 'those
detestable markets and fair, vulgarly called tournaments, at wh knights are wont to assemble, in order to display their
strength and rash boldness' and PROHIBITED CHRISTIAN BURIAL TO those who died
in tournaments. This injunction was repeated at other Church councils (in 1139,
1148, 1157, 1179, 1215, 1245, 1279, 1313) down to 1316, when Pope John XXII gave
up the fight and bestowed his blessings on them.
Thirteenth century
ecclesiastical writers preached against tournaments. One reported that demons
were heard and seen in the form of vultures and crows at tourn.
of
TEACHING TEXTS:
High
Middle Ages (ca. 1050-1300)
Song
of Roland (ca. 1100).
Themes & issues: the struggle between Christians (=good) and Muslims/Pagans
(=bad); Christian knighthood; loyalty and honor; nature of kingship. Brutal,
violent, focused on war.
Typical sentiments (spoken by Roland):
“Here we stand, definding our great king. /
This is the service a vassal owes his lord: / To suffer hardships, endure great
heat and cold / And in battle to lose both hair and hide. / Now every Frank
prepare to strike great blows--/ Let’s hear no songs that mock us to our
shame! / Pagans are wrong, the Christian cause is right. / A bad example
I’ll be in no man’s sight.” (Song of Roland, trans. Patricia Terry, Library of Liberal Arts: lines 1009-1016).
Raoul of Cambrai (ca. 1180). Themes & issues: loyalty to feudal
lord versus loyalty to kin; honor; vengeance; nature of kingship; necessity of
moderation as complement to martial prowess. About 70 pages long--brutal,
violent, focused on war.
Chretien de Troyes, The
Knight with the Lion (Yvain). Wonderfully
readable late 12th-century romance about a knight's attempt to regain the lost
love of his wife. Good on courtly manners, courtly love, the meaning of honor.
In Arthurian Romances (Penguin).
Sidney Painter, William
Marshal. Modern biography of successful medieval knight who, in the late
twelfth and the early thirteenth century, rose from being a household retainer
to a great baron and, eventually, regent of
Sidney Painter, French
Chivalry. A wonderfully easy read that examines the feudal, courtly, and
Christian elements of 'chivalry.' (Perhaps overly influenced by the romantic
conception of chivalry.)
Crouch, David. William
Marshal. 2nd revised edition. Longmans, 2002. Excellent
biography of a knight with an interesting rethinking of the question of
feudalism. Crouch includes a chapter on the chivalry of William Marshal that
derives from an important article on the subject by John Gillingham.
Both Crouch and
Richard W. Kaeuper & Elspeth Kennedy, tans. A Knight's Own Book: Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny, Pennsylvania U.P.: a handbook of
chivalry written around 1350 by a famous French knight.
Late
Middle Ages (ca. 1300-1500)
Froissart, Chronicles.
Late fourteenth-century 'history' of the Hundred Years War (written ca. 1390)
emphasizing the 'good stories' (i.e., chivalric accomplishments). What is neat
about this work is that Froissart may say that he wishes to honor the memory of
those who did great deeds, but he also allows us to see how chivalry served to
unify the European aristocracy and preserve their lives on the battlefield. The
brutality of war keeps on showing its face, despite Froissart's best efforts.
Tirant lo Blanc. Late medieval chivalric romance that
swallows whole earlier 'orders of chivalry.' Chivalry at its most flamboyant.
This was the book that Don Quixote was reading when he went mad.
Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight. Short
14th-century English metrical romance. Good for courtly manners. Issue of
integrity of Gawain in face of certain death.
REFERENCE BOOKS:
Barber, Richard. The Knight
and Chivalry. revised edition. Boydell and
Brewer, 1996. Good, basic overview.
Bouchard, Constance. Strong of Body, Brave & Noble. Chivalry and
Society in Medieval
Crouch,
David. William Marshal: Knighthood, War
and Chivalry, 1147-1219, 2nd edn.
Duby, Georges. William Marshal: The
Flower of Chivalry.
Anthropological
approach to William's deathbed scene by one of
http://www.deremilitari.org/resources/pdfs/gillingham1.pdf.
A seminal article that argues convincingly that 1) the Histoire is
concerned more with Marshal's activities in war, both as general and soldier,
rather than as "knight-errant" on the tournament circuit; and 2) that
the warfare described in the Histoire was the typical warfare of the
period, marked by battle avoidance, ravaging of the countryside to deprive the
enemy of economic resources and to destroy morale, followed up by sieges.
Written in refutation of Duby’s book.
Huizinga, J. The Waning of
the Middle Ages. 1919. Influential thesis: late medieval chivalry was
aesthetic and emotional ideal that had become completely divorced from reality
by the 14th and 15th centuries.
Jaeger, Stephen. Origins of
Courtliness. UPA, 1985. A book that has restructured all discussion on the
origins of chivalry. Jaeger traces the ethos of courtliness back to 10th
century German episcopal courts and emphasizes its Classical Roman roots.
Kaeuper, Richard. Chivalry and Violence
(1999). A brilliant study of chivalry as portrayed in medieval vernacular
romances. Kaeuper, like Painter, examines how nobles
themselves viewed chivalry, and how royalty and clergy attempted to shape the
ethos to their liking. The basic thesis is summed up by the title: prowess was
the capstone value of chivalry, and, rather than moderating or curbing
violence, the ideal of chivalry legitimized it.
Kaueper, Richard. Holy Warrior: The Religious Ideology of
Chivalry. (The Middle Ages Series.)
Keen, Maurice. Chivalry.
Yale, 1984. The standard scholarly work on the subject.
Painter,
Sidney. William Marshal: Knight-Errant, Baron, and Regent of
This is the
first full biography of William Marshal written by one of the great American
medieval historians. Painter was a first-rate scholar and knew his
sources. The biography, however, is very much colored by Painter's
romantic conception of twelfth-century chivalry. Readable and sound (with the
above caveat).
Painter, Sidney. French Chivalry: Ideals and Practices in
Mediaeval
Stickland, Matthew. War and Chivalry: The Concept and Perception of War in