Chivalry
Mar 29, 2015 1:43:00 GMT
Post by dfeola103 on Mar 29, 2015 1:43:00 GMT
Here is a 40 page paper I wrote in regards to chivalry back in 2012. I figured I would throw it up on here. Please forgive errors I believe this is my unedited version, sorry I couldn't locate the edited version.
The present day use of chivalry is a poor reflection of what the term once meant. Today it is used to give a sense of fair play, being polite towards women, and has a courteous old fashioned quality to it . In the middle ages the term, used in a broad sense, encompassed the body of knights themselves and anything regarding them and their role in society. In a more precise fashion, chivalry was a complex and apparent contradictory code of behavior to which a knight was supposed to obey, and measure themselves. Even though chivalry was mainly associated with the military, it presented ideals of behavior both on and off the battlefield, and became an ideology that was to be incorporated in all aspects of its members’ lives. This is just an attempt to put a definition to the term, as it is almost impossible to define the word because it was more an outlook than a doctrine, more a lifestyle than an obvious ethical code. There were a set of qualities central to its existence which included; loyalty, generosity, dedication, courage, and courtesy, which were all praised by the military class whom believed the ideal knight should possess.
What cannot be disputed is that chivalry, in the sense of an aristocratic value system had a wide influence on medieval society. The aristocracy in which this code lived constituted the social as well as the military elite, and because of this, had a great influence on medieval culture. In medieval England, chivalry was felt in political life, social behavior, in the conduct of disputes, in funeral rituals, even in architecture and design. Its impact on the culture of society was definitely real and extensive. The historian, Johan Huizinga wrote, “Combing the records in which chivalry is little mentioned, [historians] have succeeded in presenting a picture of the middle ages in which economic and social points of view are so dominant that one tends at times to forget that, next to religion, chivalry was the strongest of the ideas which filled the minds and hearts of those men of another age”. The origin of the term chivalry comes from the combination of the French word of chevalier, a knight, and the word chevalerie, the skill in the art of horsemanship. The word is difficult to define because it had so many ways it could have been used. In early texts it just meant a group of heavily armed horsemen, a group of chevaliers. Other times it was used to define a knightly order, similar to a religious order. Sometimes it was used to describe the warrior class whose main purpose was to defend their country and their church. In essence knights and chivalry could not be separated and romance writers allowed the ideology to flourish.
Chivalry can be seen as having three separate influences on its development, each bringing in a different set of values. The first influence was the warrior’s ethic which stressed bravery in battle, physical strength, military expertise, skill on horseback, the knowledge of how to use the lance and sword. One can see these ideals in tales from the 11th century, such as the Song of Roland, which is an epic poem that exemplifies chivalric ideals of being brave, fighting against overwhelming odds, loyalty, and friendship. Another book published in the 11th century that helped in chivalry’s development was the History of William Marshal, which is the biography of the famous William Marshal. The biography tells of William’s skill at tournaments, battles, and his wise advice he would give. William Marshal was known as the “flower of chivalry” and taught chivalry to King Henry III as a child and he also served under Richard the Lionheart in the third crusade. In the biography his biographer Geoffrey de Charny wrote, “…if you desire that your arms be remembered, recognized, and adorned above others, seek constantly and diligently to perform deeds of arms. And when god grants you the good fortune to find them, do your duty wisely and boldly, fearing nothing except shame, striving with the skill of your hand and the effort of your body to as great a degree as your powers can extend in order to inflict damage on your opponents, always being among the first in battle. By so doing you will receive greater recognition for your achievements from your friends and enemies…” . This passage tells of how one can obtain glory and recognition through being an expert in battle, one of chivalry’s cornerstone ideals.
Chivalry also had an influence from religion. Church officials wanted to try and reduce the amount of violence happening among the knight aristocracy, so they took two ways to do so. Firstly, the church tried to limit the effects of warfare by putting restrictions, such as places for it to occur, times, people, sort of like the Geneva conventions today. The second and much more influential and impactful was harnessing the knights’ energy into church defined goals, such as the Crusades. Knights accepted this, and didn’t refrain from following religious standards, however, t they did refuse to follow the church’s definition of themselves; that violence was an evil, even if it is a necessary one. Knights saw honor and glory in war and refused to accept the restrictive definition that the church defined them as. The Song of Roland is the epitome of this, by glorifying war and a notion of cooperation between the religious and secular powers in maintaining social order. This is when knights began to see themselves as a societal order bound by god whose purpose of fighting was an honorable and necessary one. This transition can be seen through the formation of the rituals of which one is dubbed. These elegant rituals mirrored religious ceremony, although the church did not recognize it as a sacrament. Chivalrous principles were created and recreated constantly between the relationship of a knight’s real behavior and the literary and artistic depictions of knightly behavior.
Chivalric Literature
Literature had a profound impact upon chivalry and chivalry had an impact upon literature. In the medieval aristocratic society, chivalric activity and cultural expectation were nearly indistinguishable. Well received by the aristocracy, romance writers dealt with themes dealing of bravery, a knight’s quest for honor, and the romance between a knight and his lady. These themes interested the aristocracy because they saw themselves as a military elite class, but were also a social elite class which influenced numerous types of people. Lower class knights, squires, the lesser gentry, and townsmen were all influenced by the chivalric aristocracy. Chivalric culture played a very important role in shaping medieval society’s culture as a whole. Not only did it influence literature, but also influenced architecture and other arts. The chivalric culture began to emerge during the 12th century with the renaissance period taking place and Europe undergoing an enormous intellectual awakening. This new thinking caused pessimism to fade out, to be replaced by a new restored feeling that viewed humans with dignity and new abilities. Troubadours began to rise bringing a new way to voice literature which displayed a new variety of tenderness and emotion that was not seen before. Chivalry was able to rise and thrive in this new environment; it transformed the image of the knight from simply a warrior to a role model, and a romanticized figure. Along with the intellectual awakening was a cultural awakening which really made the chivalric culture emergence possible.
In medieval England, chivalry took on four main forms in a broad sense. The first three are related because they deal with literature. The first form was a love of the new literature of Arthurian romance, which the author Geoffrey of Monmouth made popular. The second was the new desire for vernacular poetry which talked if rightneousness by dealing with the adventures of local heroes and a family’s past. The third form was the English aristocracy’s desire to learn about England’s history. The fourth form which doesn’t relate to the first three was the new development of visual symbolism, referred to as heraldry. These four formed the main elements of the chivalric culture that emphasized romance heroism and display.
Before Geoffrey of Monmouth’s writings of King Arthur, there was an earlier genre that was similar called the chansons de geste meaning “songs of deeds”. The chansons de geste were medieval verse epics that emerged in France. Most of the Chanson de Geste’s followed heroic deeds of famous leaders, in particular the Emperor Charlemagne. The chansons de geste are separated into three groups, the Geste du Roi, the Geste de Garin de Monglane, and the Geste de Doon de Mayence. The Geste du Roi meaning “Deeds of the King” tells about Charlemagne’s battle against the pagans, Saxons , and the Saracens. It also includes the aforementioned, The Song of Roland, one of the oldest and most famous works. The Geste de Garin de Monglane tells of how Charlemagne and his paladins marched and protected their kingdoms. The Geste de Doon de Mayence tells of uprisings within the nobility and how they were put down. As these epic poems were rewritten, new values surrounding chivalry began to be implemented, such as mercy for the defeated, trying to service and adore women, and the growth of knights’ morals. During this evolution troubadours’ love poetry became very popular and together the new epic poems and love poems created the romance genre. Another important development of chivalric literature was the three matters. In the chanson de Saisnes, another chanson de geste, whose theme was the wars of Charlemagne, stated that, “there are three matters above all about which every man should know something: the matter of France, the matter of Britain, and the matter of Rome the Great”. These three matters would have a great impact on chivalric literature, and contained the best subject matter of chivalrous literature.
The romance genre flourished between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries often dealing with a knight or nobleman pursuing a lady of the court. The chivalry that was engrained in the love poetry during this time influenced many important figures. Duke William IX of Aquitaine was a famous author of poetry and his ideals of chivalry thrived at his court. His granddaughter, Eleanor, was the wife of Louis VII of France, and later, of Henry II of England, and she would also mother the famous Richard the Lionheart. Eleanor was a great patron of literature and troubadours; she also had a great interest in the matter of Britain, which focused on the feats of King Arthur. Geoffrey of Monmouth was the author who created the Arthurian tales in his History of the Kings of Britain, which was published between 1135 and 1139 in England. The matter of Britain had fewer sources for history unlike the other two matters, which allowed authors such as Geoffrey of Monmouth more freedom in writing. Geoffrey of Monmouth used reliable sources such as Bede, Gildas and Nennius for his Arthurian tales, but also used Welsh legends to fill in where the legitimate sources had no information . Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain gave the base for all Arthurian authors that would follow.
Many famous characters each with different characteristics would rise from Arthurian legend. English writers would use Geoffrey’s version of Sir Gawain, by keeping his attributes of being an energetic, headstrong, and full of valor. Sir Gawain’s character appealed to English writers especially due to his manly qualities, and they saw him as the standard of the fighting knight. Sir Gawain becomes popular in the late fourteenth century with the writing of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight where he is shown as brave, valiant, and the epitome of chivalrous. When it’s time for him to die, Sir Gawain’s loyalty is highlighted and he becomes the aspiration in which English knights want to live up to in the Hundred Years War. Another famous knight to arise from Arthurian legend is Sir Lancelot, who is known as the most human because of his inability to stay away from Queen Guinevere, Arthur’s wife. Sir Lancelot’s character is made famous by the author Sir Thomas Malory in his book, Le Morte d’ Arthur written in 1485. Malory saw Sir Lancelot as the model for a practical knight rather than an unrealistic one. Another knight known as the pure knight is Sir Galahad who is introduced in the thirteenth century, Quest for the Holy Grail and also in later in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur. Galahad is is an entirely pure, free of sin knight who is able to find the Holy Grail.
Out of the Arthurian legends came the notion of the quest which was a matter where a knight could prove his worth and to right wrongs. It was the perfect medium to praise knighthood, and to examine the relationship of chivalric practices to the civilization in medieval Europe. The quest for the Holy Grail was linked with Arthurian legends after the writer Chretien de Troyes introduced it. Another symbolic object that arises is King Arthur’s Round Table where knights must display chivalric superhuman qualities to obtain a spot. Aforementioned the Knights of the Round Table are often flawed, whether giving into love, jealousy or disloyalty.
Knighthood
The knight himself changed over the 500 years in which he dominated due to new developments in weaponry and the armorer’s response. The popular depiction of a knight is that he was just a warrior, but the knight had many skills other than combative ones. The knight was most definitely part of a warrior class, but he also made up the political and social elite as well. This enabled him with the ability to finance the expensive resources necessary to being a knight, such as armor, weapons, and horses. It also gave the knight the time necessary in honing his skills in battle tactics, horsemanship, and other essential skills used on the battlefield. The social status of knights began very low, in the 11th centuries they were nothing more than armed servants. These men were seen as violent and dangerous, nothing like the chivalrous knights portrayed in romance literature. Since they were servants and not wealthy their armor and weapons were provided by their lords.
By the 12th century their status and rank in society had risen and every lord was a knight, even if every knight was not a lord. These lords began to start a training method where a young noble would become a knight. It would begin when the child was seven where the parents would decide if the child would join the church or not. If not he would begin his knighthood training. The skills necessary to fight at the level a knight does took a long time to develop. It is similar to modern day athletes, where they begin their training during childhood in order to become elite in their sport. The goal was to create a person capable of handling a lance or sword easily while riding a horse. There was more to military skills as well; these young nobles would also be educated in the basics of reading and writing, as well as how to properly act in court. When the young noble would become a knight it would be thought that he had come of age, but also that he encompassed his moral responsibilities. Quite often noble boys would be sent away to a lord’s court to be trained as knights. Paul the Deacon described how it was common for the early Lombard kings to send their sons to the court of a foreign lordThey would often go to an uncle’s court and it was preferred to be the mother’s brother’s court rather than the father’s brother’s court. It was preferred this way because a paternal uncle would see his nephews as rivals because of how the inheritance worked and would not have a close relationship. However, a boy’s maternal uncle would gladly take in his nephews and establish a close relationship with them because they were no threat to his inheritance. Maternal uncles tended to be closer to age to the young boys as well, since young noble women married much older men than themselves. Another way for boys to train was to go to a powerful duke or count’s court where a whole group of young men would be training. This would create close relationships throughout a region due to noblemen being close friends with other noblemen since they trained together as boys.
Part of the boy’s education was to learn to read and write, both in the vernacular and Latin. They would also learn how to do math. These skills were necessary for when they would become adults because they needed to know how to understand contracts and also be able to keep track of their income and duties. They were exposed to Classical Latin authors who were believed to be examples of how to behave in the secular world; to be modest, have restraint, and have self-control. They were also educated in religion with a castle chaplain supervising their education. They would learn the main doctrines of Christian theology and this religious education also helped strengthen their knowledge of Latin. Besides spending time in the classroom, the young noblemen would spend numerous hours riding horses and learning to fight. This training was extremely crucial for the young noble as being talented at fighting on horseback was the ultimate goal. The boys would start off riding ponies and using wooden swords and then would progressively advance to horses and steel blades. They would have drills such as trying to hit a ring that hung from a string with their lance or riding at a quintain which was a shield attached to a revolving arm on one side and a sandbag on the other. If one was not riding fast enough he would be struck by the sandbag.
Usually an old knight would supervise the boys’ training and would start their training off as little more than games, but would intensify the training as the boys grew older. They would learn how to properly care for their horses and also grow used to wearing heavy armor for hours without becoming tired. The boys were also taught how to hunt properly, the right way to track, kill, and cut up their kill. This was a good way to practice for warfare, hunting also showed social status and power while providing food for the knightly households. Hunting was an important way for groups of knights, a lord and his household to practice riding in arms together. In these groups the knights practiced horsemanship, the use of weapons, and how to read the terrain. Hunting also created chemistry amongst the knights which translated onto the battlefield. Besides doing schoolwork and military exercises the boys also had to go through extensive training in courtesy. This taught young aristocrats how to behave appropriately in a polite society, which meant speaking in a cultured way, dressing properly, keeping their hygiene in check, and also practicing arts such as dancing, music, and poetry. Even though knights were violent with a lance and sword they always wanted to see themselves as sophisticated. The young nobles would also learn how to play games, such as chess which was considered appropriate for the nobility. The boys were also expected to be able to talk with ladies properly without being shy.
During the training the young noble would be known as a page. The page would serve knights during their own education as well as doing menial tasks. They would set tables for dinner, carry messages, and helping a knight dress. These duties were meant to help integrate the young men into the courts and give them the knowledge of what went on. The pages would also greatly admire the knights they served and would inspire them to work harder at their training. As the page would grow into manhood and get further along in his training he would become a squire. The squire would accompany their knight into tournaments and battle to help them with their armor, weapons, and the care of their horse. Basically squires had obtained the skills necessary in being a knight, but had not gone through the formal knighting ceremony. The ceremony had become very expensive in the late 13th century and many squires could not afford it and ended up just living their adulthood living as knights without the title. Huge feasts and tournaments would be held once a group of youths had been knighted. It is comparable to the present day students graduation from college where these groups of boys had entered training at a young age and had been dedicated for many years. It called for a feast and tournament play where the new knights could show off their skills. The high cost of these parties were one of the reasons many men who were fully able to become knights remained squires.
These ceremonies of dubbing knights took on great symbolism and embodied religious and chivalric values. The first known fully developed knighting ceremony was held in 1128 for Geoffrey, the future count of Anjou. Ramon Lull described this process in his Ordene de Chevalerie where he showed the process Geoffrey went through. In Geoffrey’s ceremony he took a ritual bath, he was then dressed in a gold tunic and a purple cloak with a white belt, and was taken before King Henry I of England. He was then given gold spurs to put on, given a shield with lions painted upon it, and a sword. He was then dubbed a knight along with thirty other knights, and once they were knights King Henry distributed gifts of horses and arms. Lull puts each part of the ceremony with Christian symbolism; the bath is similar to a baptism and signifies cleansing from sin, the white belt signifies chastity, and the sword is has sharp edges which reminds the newly appointed knight of his obligation to protect the weak and uphold justice. The spurs represented the knight’s skill in horsemanship. Not all ceremonies were the same; some were simply a wise old knight giving the squire his sword and spurs, possibly slapping him or kissing him to declare that he was now a knight. It was in the 13th century where fully developed ceremonies took place, like the one described by Lull. Some ceremonies involved church officials, where on the eve of becoming a knight, the candidate would be bathed in rose water, after which, he would attend mass. The priest would then give the aspiring knight a slap on the hand and would pray for God’s blessing on the aspirant’s knighthood. The priest would then give the knight a blessed sword from the altar as well as golden spurs. This created two strands of ceremonies the secular and the religious with the former being more expected.
Stated earlier, King Henry I distributed arms and horses to the newly appointed knights, this is an age old custom that can be seen in pre- chivalric literature. In the story Beowulf, Wiglaf tells how the hero gave arms to those who were allowed to join his war band. This is where the idea of “dubbing” one to knighthood comes from. The French word adouber, to dub, originally meant to equip a man with arms. It is also used to describe in the knighting of a knight and became the common use of the word, to dub someone a knight. The newly appointed knight would take on the honor and status in whomever did the dubbing. Blood was indeed important to a man’s standing in society, but whomever he was dubbed a knight was possibly just as important. It was a way of social mobility of a person with no lineage of nobility to join the rank of knighthood. Sir Thomas Malory depicts this in his Le Morte d’Arthur,
“FORTHWITHAL there came a poor man into the court, and brought with him a fair young man of eighteen years of age riding upon a lean mare; and the poor man asked all men that he met, Where shall I find King Arthur? Yonder he is, said the knights, wilt thou anything with him? Yea, said the poor man, therefore I came hither. Anon as he came before the king, he saluted him and said: O King Arthur, the flower of all knights and kings, I beseech Jesu save thee. Sir, it was told me that at this time of your marriage ye would give any man the gift that <82>he would ask, out except that were unreasonable. That is truth, said the king, such cries I let make, and that will I hold, so it apair not my realm nor mine estate. Ye say well and graciously, said the poor man; Sir, I ask nothing else but that ye will make my son here a knight..”
This enforced the desire of having a popular and noble lord to appoint the aspiring knight to knighthood in romance. This idea of youths seeking the honor of having someone of high status declaring them knights can be routinely seen in other epics and romances where they sought out Charlemagne or King Arthur to do so. In real life it often went to whomever supervised their training such as the uncle.
In the later middle ages young aspiring knights were still concerned with the status of whoever was knighting them, but it had been tweaked. In the thirteenth century aspiring knights wanted to be knighted by knights who had established a name for themselves by their expertise and skill of being a knight. This would reflect each parties honor and reputation because the men doing the knighting would want to knight deserving individuals that would not bring shame to their name. This is how chivalry was flourishing during this time because it showed how each man wanted to be successful and also select men of honor to succeed them. This was common on the eve of battle when men believed being knighted would improve their strength and virtue in battle and even after the battle if the individual displayed certain chivalrous attributes. The former can be seen in the romance of Durmant le Galois which tells of how the hero Durmart knighted twenty noble squires before a battle and how the idea of chivalry was enforced.
After this mass dubbing, Durmart made a speech to his men, “…now you are knights: and it is fitting that I should tell you something of what appertains to chivalry. A Knight must be hardy, courteous, generous, loyal and of fair speech…He has a right to the title of knighthood who has proved himself in arms and thereby won the praise of men. Seek therefore this day to do deeds that will deserve to be remembered, for every new knight should make a good beginning”. This showed how the act of becoming a knight would encourage men to fight vigorously. Regarding the dubbing of knights after battle due to exemplified bravery, an example can be seen in Jean Froissart’s version of a speech made by King James of Portugal after a victory in which he held a mass knighting of 60 men. In his speech he declares, “ …this order of chivalry is so high and so noble, that he who is a knight should have no dealing with anything that is low, with vile things or with cowardice, but he should be as hardy and as proud as a lion is in pursuit of his prey….” Both the speeches by Durmart and King James exemplify the impact earlier romances and chansons have had on the idea of being a knight. Both speak about the qualities must have and that the men must be chivalrous in their duties of a knight.
Tourrnaments
Many knights participated in tournaments because they were a perfect place to practice and display their skill. These knights were trained to fight and kill, but society and the church weren’t too keen on the idea of uncontrolled violence. Society and the knights created two venues where they could release their urge to fight and kill, the crusades and the tournament. People often confuse tournaments and jousts as being the same thing, but they are different. The tournament was a mass activity where lots of action occurred. At the core, it was a massive mock battle involving hundreds sometimes thousands of knights fighting across a big open area.The jousts were single events of combat where knights would face off on horseback in a confined space. Jousts would go along with tournaments and be an important feature of tournament festivities, and beginning in the 13th century jousts would be the preferred event of knights. By the 12th century, knights were so obsessed with the desire to show off their skills that the line between war and games often became unclear. During times of war the besieged would grow bored and would sometimes hold military games with each other. This regular participation in tournaments allowed the knights to bond together as a group, developing the chemistry of battle which united them as a martial class and bound them together as members of a chivalrous community. Tourneying was crucial in the development, promotion, and sustaining of the culture and the performance of chivalry.
It is hard to pinpoint a date on when tournaments began being held, but its origins can be seen as far back in epics like , The Song of Roland, “At the game-boards to pass an idle hour; -- Chequers the old, for wisdom most renowned, While fence the young and lusty bachelours.” This tells of the bachelours or young knights having military exercises with each other, while the old play games such as chess to keep the mind occupied with strategy. The more modern and organized tournament that would flourish throughout Europe in the 12th century, was seen in the Arthurian legend. In Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, the term tournament is used often and the tales of knights proving “marvelous deeds of arms” are mentioned. The tournaments popularity would become widespread enough in the early 12th century to cause concern amongst the church. In 1130 the Pope, Innocent II declared that any knight slain at a tournament would be denied a proper Christian burial. The way the tournaments worked in the 12th century would be, a place be determined, usually on the border of two towns so not one has jurisdiction, and would be wide open. In the case of England, Richard I’s tournaments would be between Warwick and Kenilworth, and would usually consist of two teams, the Northern Englishmen and Southern Englishmen. If one would lose in the tournament and become a captive of another knight his armor, weapons, and horse would become the victor’s spoils of victory along with his person being held for ransom.
In the early days of tournaments, there were no set of official rules and the mock battle that would occur was very similar to real battle. There was however certain things that would be frowned upon such as the use of arrows and bolts. Sometimes emotions would flare, in what would become known as the “little battle of Chalons” the Count of Chalons had grabbed King Edward I of England by the neck in an attempt to unhorse him, the King saw this as cheap and had his footmen intervene causing lots of casualties amongst participating knights and spectators. The two English Kings Richard I and Edward I would devise a set of rules to reduce the bloodshed that would occur at tournaments. Richard I would charge a fee for any knight who wanted to participate in his tournaments; 20 marks for an earl, 10 for a baron, 4 for a landed knight, and 2 marks for a knight with no land.
…no tourneyer,however wealthy he may be, may take as escort more than three squires to serve him…no knight or squire attending a tournament shall carry a pointed sword, nor a pointed knight, nor mace, nor sword with sharpened edge during the event….
Edward I created rules where a knight had a limit on followers, and also enforced the use of blunt weapons. Regulations like this would make the act of participating in a tournament more like a professional sport. Knights could find vast wealth by doing well in tournaments along with creating a celebrity personality. Tournaments would become the sport of choice by the aristocracy and would have an audience which rated the knights’ performances.
One man that really used the tournament system to create a name for himself was the Englishman William Marshal, the earl of Pembroke and man who was to be the regent of England while Henry III came of age . William Marshal’s story is almost a Hollywood fairytale, there was no reason Marshal’s name would be remembered before he entered the world of tournaments. Marshal was a younger brother and second son of his father which meant he was not going to receive any inheritance and he would have to find his own way to success. Marshal was sent to his mother’s cousin who was a baron during his early teens and through his patronage would be able to participate in tournaments.
Only that day had the Marshal been a poor man as regards possessions and horses, and now he had four and a half, fine mounts and handsome, thanks to God. He also had hacks and palfreys, fine pack-horses and harnesses. The tournament disbanded...They paid the Marshal great honour and treated him very courteously, more so than they had done before.
William would be referred to as “The Marshal” and flourished in even his first tournament taking prominent knights such s Sir Philip de Valognes prisoner and collecting fine prizes.
Through his tour of tournaments his great feats caught the attention of Henry II who would have William mentor his son. William Marshal flourished under the Kings liberality, by being able to continue his career in tournaments where he made vast amounts of wealth from prizes and ransoms. When Henry III would die in 1183, the Marshal would join his brother Richard the Lionheart, and would gain more prizes, his big achievement during this time was marrying Isabel de Clare, the heiress of the earldom of Pembroke, which would give him one of the biggest inheritances in the kingdom. When it came time to decide the English crown regent after King John’s death it came down to two candidates, William Marshal and Ranulph, 6th Earl of Chester, according to William Marshal’s biography, The History of William Marshal. Ranulph conceded the position to Marshal claiming, “You are so good a knight, so fine a man, so feared, so loved and so wise, that you are considered one of the first knights of the world. I say to you in all loyalty that you must be chosen.. The Marshal would be forever known as one the most successful knights, and truly a great story of owning no land to becoming the regent king of England. However, not all knights on the tournament circuit were nearly as successful as William Marshal. The tournaments were expensive; a knight had to supply himself with armor, weapons, horses, and entry fees. If a knight would be unhorsed or taken prisoner during a tournament he would leave much poorer than when he entered. Many young knights lost everything their fathers had given them and many had to mortgage their lands.
Tournaments allowed knights to display and participate in chivalry, martial skills, courtesy towards women, and Christian values. These tournaments were more than sporting events to the knights that participated in them, it was what they would use to set each other apart and define themselves. Women’s role in the tournament was a big one, even though they were not allowed to enter a tournament, their audience inspired the knights fighting. It’s safe to say that the woman’s status in the Middle Ages was not one to envy, but this was different in the tournament setting. Stands were raised for spectators as far back as the 1170s, and these were mainly for women. These women would look over the lists of knights and watch the opening jousts of the day. These women were vocal during these events and would sit for hours on end reminiscing about part tournaments. Some say the women were the memory of the tournament and since they held the tournaments memory they were necessarily its arbiters. The women became very involved in the festivities and would often show their emotions, such as showing concern for knights laid on their backs from a violent joust hit. At the feasts during tournaments the women were very involved with the men, they danced, ate, sang, and talked, all sorts of interaction with the men.
The mingling of men and women would lead to more than flirting, but if one would be caught for adultery the consequences would be dire.This intermingling would be condemned by the Cardinal James de Vitry:
There is plenty of the seventh deadly sin, called Lust, since the tournament goers are out to entice shameless women, if the achieve prowess in arms; they are also accustomed to carry certain female tokens, as it they were their banners.
The romances of the time were full of men who received gestures and marks from their ladies to wear in tournament. The most common token to wear were sleeves that attached to the top of a knight’s helmet. If a lady saw her favorite knight wearing another ladies sleeve she would become saddened.
The tournament was composed of many different events. The melee was an event which could last all day and went on across a large area of land. There were areas throughout the melee course called refuges where a knight could rest and catch his breath. The goal of the melee was to unhorse as many of the opposing team’s knights as possible. If a knight would become injured or unhorsed he was supposed to surrender, if he failed to do so the dominant knight and his squires would drag him back to the refuge area. The melee was divided into two teams and the leaders of the two sides were determined by the highest ranking lords present. A lot went into making sure that both sides were evenly matched; the two sides made sure each were equal in number of knights, and had similar distribution of experienced to inexperienced knights. The team with the most knights still mounted on their horses would be deemed the victors. At the end of the day all the knights would take baths, tend to their wounds, and if knights had been unhorsed they would negotiate to buy back any equipment they had lost. Another event at the tournament, which would become the event of choice over the melee in the late Middle Ages was the joust. The joust took place on a long narrow strip separated by a barrier where the knights would charge towards each other. The objective was to strike the opponent on the shield with a lance and force him off of his horse. If both knights were dismounted simultaneously they would commence a swordfight on foot. The joust also had its place in society other than tournaments. It was used as a ‘trial by battle’ where two knights would joust to see who was in the right. This trial by battle was fought with sharpened weapons and would often end in a fight to the death. This would be banned by the church after the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215.
The use of heraldry, the systematic use of hereditary emblems on the shield of a knight or nobleman can be seen as a response to tournaments. It was very important for knights to know who they were fighting in a tournament so that if they had unhorsed or hoped to take the opponent prisoner they would know the significance of victory. It also aided the audience in knowing who was who and allowed them to judge individual performances. First displayed on the knight’s shield, the heraldic insignias were also placed on the knight’s surcoat, horses, seals, and tombs. Heraldry became symbolic of family pride and the culture of nobility in general. The men placed in charge of heraldry would become known as the heralds. They found business by staging and attending the ceremonies of tournament. The heralds did more than design and track a knight’s coat of arms; they also would travel announcing about a coming event. They would be hired by knights and would announce for them, and cheer them on during contests. William Marshal would encounter a herald at tournaments, Henry le Norreis, who would welcome the Marshal’s appearance at tournaments with, “God aid the Marshal! ”. The status of the herald would elevate in the 13th century, and would create a hierarchy with the title of King of Arms at the top. Heralds would wear his master’s colors, and were regularly paid by their master. The heralds would act as the recorders of chivalry that would be on display at tournaments. The heralds also played an important part in the field of battle where they would record promotions to knighthoods, and also record the names and arms of knights whom displayed impressive skill in the field. They also obtained immunity from hostile action during battle, and served as messengers. In the 15th century the men who held the highest position in the hierarchy of heralds, the King of Arms would play a significant role in diplomacy.
The church condemned tournaments from the very beginning, the tournaments put men’s lives in danger which in turn put their souls at risk. Tournaments were very dangerous and the sin of murder was easily attainable, even if unintentional. Tournaments were also the place knights went to show off their skills, thus creating pride in themselves which is a sin. The church would ban tournaments, but the tournaments were too well-established, and the church’s authority was too weak to enforce. A preacher named John Bromyard, who had his lands impoverished by tournaments, would condemn them as well. He would tell horror stories to scare knights from participating in tournaments; he would say tourneyers would suffer in hell with armor nailed to them and cannot be taken off, they are given evil smelling sulphurous baths and then afterwards , instead of the warm embraces of wanton young women they are obliged to endure the amorous attentions of lascivious toads. The church encouraged knights to fight in the crusades, instead of for pride in themselves, they could fight for God. The idea of chivalry supported this by believing it was necessary to participate in a crusade in order to obtain perfect knighthood. However, many knights only expected to go on one crusade, and found no harm in participating in tournaments.
In the 14th century the Church came to the conclusion that there was no harm in allowing knights to participate in tournaments. The Church took the ground that tournaments helped knights prepare themselves for the crusades where they would fight for God. The crusade which once was the reason Popes banned tournaments became the reason why the Church decided to lift the ban. Tournaments were the perfect place to recruit for crusades, because there was an abundance of knights, and they received peer pressure to take up the cross and fight for heavenly glory. Once the ban had been formally withdrawn, it was believed that an aspiring knight should make his way through three steps; perform in jousts, secondly participate in tournaments, and lastly war.
Chivalry in War
The idea of chivalry was romanticized in literature and legend, but at its core it was indeed a martial notion. Johan Huizinga saw chivalry as an idolized concept, one that was not close to reality. War in Europe during the Middle Ages was brutal, with the peasants taking the brunt of the violence rather than the knights. England in the Hundred Years War carried out brutish tactics against the French populace with aims to demoralize the enemy and hope for negotiations. Edward the Black Prince destroyed a dozen cities and more than 3,700 villages in a campaign against the French according to the Anonimalle Chronicle. Did the people of European society see this kind of war, one with cheap tricks, and attacks on the weak as chivalric? William Marshal, as talked about already, was known as the “Flower of Chivalry”, yet he participated in devious tricks. Men of the time did not have time for the abstract idealism of chivalry, but had to be practical. The mass killings of peasants raised concern amongst society, and the Church tried to quell this violent epidemic. This would become known as the Peace of God movement which consisted of a series of councils that would place strong penalties on individuals that attacked churches or peasants, such as excommunication.
This Peace of God movement would change in the 13th century with thinkers like e St. Thomas Aquinas, who believed how a war should be just. He believed people non involved in the fighting of the war should have certain rights, but his ideas would fail because church doctrine supported war that was just, which was open for interpretation. People saw the devastation of war as a punishment from God and if peasants supported their lord, then they were just as wrong as him and were open for punishment. Knights ravaging an pillaging villages can be attributed to the high costs of war, and since knights had to finance their own gear, believed they were entitled to the spoils of victory. It was also very lucrative for men who were not the first born and were not going to receive their father’s inheritance. It allowed them to finance their estates and retain their nobility, for knights with no land it opened opportunity for social advancement by becoming rich off of spoils of war.
Chivalry moderated brutish acts in war, but it was mainly benefited the knights who were apart of the chivalric class. Chivalry was held rather on the sidelines of battle rather than the war itself. Before battles or during sieges knights would fight each other one on one, where chivalric virtues would be in place. One can make the argument however, that chivalry was deeply rooted in tournaments which helped improve his horsemanship, and mastering the use of weapons when wearing armor, thus the chivalric culture was essential for any knight participating in battle. Chivalry also enforced mental attributes essential in battle, such as courage. In battle a group of knights touched with chivalric pride could have the upper hand. An example would be the battle at Verneuil during the Hundred Years War where a small group of English knights were outnumbered and out armed by the French forces. According to the military historian, Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred Burne the battle of Verneuil was one of the great successes of the English during the Hundred Years War, ranking up there with Poitiers and Agincourt. Burne believed that the French army had no desire to fight that day, and the Englishmen’s mental strangeness attributed by a chivalry mindset led to victory.
In November of 1095 the Pope Urban II would call upon the Christian knights of Europe to travel to the Holy Land of Jerusalem and liberate it from Muslim power, beginning a series of “Holy Wars” that would define the knight in history.
"All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power of God with which I am invested. O what a disgrace if such a despised and base race, which worships demons, should conquer a people which has the faith of omnipotent God and is made glorious with the name of Christ! With what reproaches will the Lord overwhelm us if you do not aid those who, with us, profess the Christian religion! Let those who have been accustomed unjustly to wage private warfare against the faithful now go against the infidels and end with victory this war which should have been begun long ago. Let those who for a long time, have been robbers, now become knights. Let those who have been fighting against their brothers and relatives now fight in a proper way against the barbarians. Let those who have been serving as mercenaries for small pay now obtain the eternal reward. Let those who h ave been wearing themselves out in both body and soul now work for a double honor. Behold! on this side will be the sorrowful and poor, on that, the rich; on this side, the enemies of the Lord, on that, his friends. Let those who go not put off the journey, but rent their lands and collect money for their expenses; and as soon as winter is over and spring comes, let hem eagerly set out on the way with God as their guide."
The Pope promised knights that all of their sins would be forgiven and that their journey to hell due to their thievery and violence would be cancelled. The Pope refers to the knights unjustly fighting their brothers and relatives as their participation in tournaments, and now offers the solution of becoming a holy warrior instead of a tourneyer. Crusading would raise the knight’s estate, making it similar to being a priest in the Church. Crusading was well accepted by the people of Europe because it was an activity in which the knight could obtain distinction.
England’s involvement in the Crusades began with Richard the Lionheart’s involvement in the Third Crusade in the 1190s. England had participated slightly before the Third Crusade, with a few going east in the 1090s and in the 1140s. Men who wanted to contribute did so by giving donations to the Church. Comparing England’s involvement and support in the early years of crusading to that of the rest of Europe, it was very little. This can be due to the fact that, crusaders participation relied on the involvement of their lord or king, and during the First Crusade King William was an unprecedented secular man and had no interest in fighting a holy war. During the Second Crusade, England was in a civil war and was unable to participate. It was during the years where Richard fought in wars against his father, Henry II , that Richard made a name for himself. Starting in 1185 there were a series of wars and reconciliations between the old king Henry and Richard. The only person this did any good for at the time was King Philip of France.When Richard I came to power in England in 1118 things would change and he would become one of the most important and famous figures that would take part in the crusades.
News came to the West on July 4th,1187 that the army of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem had been utterly destroyed by Saladin and the Saracens, and that Saladin had entered the city of Jerusalem on October 2nd. This came as a surprise to everyone, no one expected the Christians at Jerusalem to be conquered in such a way. During the conquering of Jerusalem the Christians lost the True Cross along with the Holy City which shocked every nobleman and lord, who knew their people were upset that they were fighting with each other while such holy places and items were at stake. When the news came to England, Richard was seen as the ideal leader of a Christian army to retake the city of Jerusalem, and Richard agreed. In 1187 before the news of Jerusalem reached Europe, Richard had taken up the Cross, meaning he had sworn to be a crusader. Shortly after, King Philip of France and King Henry of England followed suit and took up the cross as well, and Europe began to prepare to embark on the Third Crusade.
However, there were a series of delays with the three monarchs. Richard began a war with King Philip, which King Henry joined him in. Richard then turned on King Henry and allied with King Philip against his Father. These quarrels finally ceased when King Henry passed away and Richard became King of England in 1189.
Richard then had to travel to England to be formally coronated and figure out how England would be ran while he was off fighting in a crusade. When Richard was finally ready to embark to Jerusalem the Queen of France died, which caused King Philip to postpone, and Richard did not want to leave without him because he feared leaving England open to attack. The two kings would finally meet in 1190 at Vezelay, France and embark on their journey to the east. It is estimated that Richard had an army of 17,000 men, a massive force in the late 12th century and this was actually paid for by the Saladin tithe, which his father had instituted. Richard on top of the Saladin tithe auctioned off vast amounts of English properties, according to Roger of Howden, “He put up for sale all he had, offices, lordships, earldoms, sheriffdoms, castles, towns, lands, everything”. This would give Richard the necessary resources to engage in an expensive endeavor, that was the crusade.
Having stopped at numerous places along the way to Jerusalem and conquering them, Richard arrived at the Crusader camp at Acre on June 8th 1191; nearly four years after he had officially taken up the Cross. The Crusaders ability to keep control of Acre and a presence in the Middle East was incredible and cannot be attributed to Richard. However, his coming to join the Crusade made a huge difference, his fame had presided him, and every Crusader believed he was the most genius general in all Christendom. The Muslims saw Richard as unequalled among other Christians in wealth, valor, and fame; his conquests of Cyprus and Sicily along his way added to his reputation. Once Richard landed in the port of Acre, he joined the siege of Acre which had lasted for nearly two years; he would be victorious in less than four weeks proving his genius in siege warfare. Richard would prove himself a match for the great Saladin, and have many victories in his campaign for Jerusalem. He scored major victories at Arsuf, Ascalon and al-Hasi. In the end he did fail to regain control of Jerusalem, but he had fought with Saladin so greatly that after two years he was able to negotiate the free access of Christian pilgrims. Richard’s victories in the Holy Land would establish a Christian kingdom in the East for another century, and for the exception of the First Crusade, the Third Crusade was the most successful and came closest to obtaining its objective. Richard departed from Palestine on October 9th, 1192, and had bad luck on his voyage home where he was imprisoned by Henry VI. The five years after his captivity would be disappointing for Richard; he found his lands in bad shape, his brother John had caused unrest, and his French vassals’ loyalty had been damaged by King Philip’s bribes. His presence back in England would stabilize the government and by 1198 he would be again one of the great kings of the world. Attracted to a false report of treasure that was his being withheld, Richard led an attack on the castle of Chalus where a random arrow mortally wounded him. He would die ten days later after much agony. The castle ended up being captured and the knight who shot the arrow. Richard had ordered the knight’s life to be spared, but his followers killed him. The Crusades had essentially lifted the ban on homicide by the Catholic Church when Pope Urban II made his proclamation. This not only allowed homicide it made it praiseworthy if committed by a crusader against non-Christians. This is what created the crusading culture and knights saw themselves as knights of Christ, and it was on this that they formed military orders. The two first orders created were quite different of each other and both set the model for future orders. The first began in 1128 at the Council of Troyes where they accepted the monastic rule of Cistercian monks, becoming a hybrid of monk warriors and would become known as the famous Knights Templars. The other introduced a class of knights into an established order of Augustian hospitallers becoming the Knights Hospitallers. These two would different models for giving military orders; the first was dominantly military based, while the latter combined military with charitable activities. The Knights Templars had their own hierarchy led by a grand master, under whom were three ranks: knights, chaplains, and sergeants. The knights were the central members, and only they were allowed to wear the distinct dress of the order, a white mantle with a large red Latin cross on the back, one that would be most linked with the Crusades. The Knights Hospitallers originally formed to run the hospital of St. John in Jerusalem, and they would then expand. They purchased Estonia from Denmark and became a sovereign power, and once Jerusalem fell to the Muslims the Knights Hospitallers established themselves on the islands of Rhodes and Malta. The Knights Templar were just as successful in the secular world, and created a network in Europe that recruited and collected funds that were then transferred to the Holy Land. The Knight’s Templar’s administrative infrastructure became very efficient and they actually began to hold and transfer money for nobles. They would become a well-established international bank, this was a major success for them, but also led to their downfall. In the early 1300s the Templars wealth and power were envied by King Philip IV of France who was in massive debt to them. In 1307 he teamed up with Pope Clement V and had the French grandmasters of the Order arrested on charges of Satanism and sacrilege. He would also have hundreds of Templar knights arrested.The Pope would later claim that he believed the Knights Templars accusations unsubstantiated, however he would still have the order suppressed in 1311 where he had the Templars’ properties turned over to the Knight’s Hospitaller, and then many of the Knights Templars were burned at the stake in 1314. The Knights Hospitaller took on similar roles as the Knights Templars by defending castles and serving as major pawns in the army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The Knights Hospitaller’s would become the Knights Templars rival in importance and prestige, however, they continued to pour a substantial part of its resources to its original charitable doings. The Knights Hospitallers did not face the same fate as the Knights Templar and were the only Order to survive and would do so until 1929.
The Decline of Knighthood & Chivalry
For almost 500 years the knight was a dominant force in war and society, his culture permeating almost every part of the medieval world. By 1600 this was no so and the dominance of the knight had vanished. This can be attributed to two causes, the distorting of the distinction between the knight and the genry, and the increased separation of the idea of nobility from military service. Men that were not dubbed knights had always served in war, and in the latter half of the 14th century the distinction between squire and knight would disappear and they would both be referred to as “man-at-arms.” In England, from King Edward III and on called upon only men-at-arms and archers, all other distinctions vanished. This can be attributed to the amplified intensity of warfare throughout Europe and the need for manpower allowed a great number of squires to play a important role in war. With King Edward III’s success he awarded these men financial rewards, in particular land which brought them to the same level as knights with estate. During the 15thcentury warfare was changing, the campaigns being waged were lasting longer and the men at arms were no longer being hired for short periods of time. The campaigns began to become all about seizing and holding territory, this caused the increase in servitude required from the military which made the gentry less inclined to participate. This led to a more professionalized army made up of men spending a majority of their time serving in garrisons.
It was developments in the 16th century that would ensure the demise of the fully armored man-at-arms due to the increase in the number of infantry in armies. The Swiss were actually one of the reasons the knight and man-at-arms disappeared in battle, the Swiss were skilled in the use of pike, halberd, and firepower which included crossbows and handguns. The Swiss would become the model for the infrastructure of armies in the 16th century. The battlefield was now made up of large blobs of pike men ranging from 3,000 to 4,000 men all clashing together. The last item to really finish off the knight was gunpowder. During the middle of the 15th century gunpowder artillery shortened the length of sieges from months to days, making the old-fashioned castle obsolete. New fortresses were raised which again lengthened sieges in the 16th century, but these were different and armored knights were not needed to capture these fortresses. Armor was unable to protect from the invention of the handgun and became obsolete, the only time it was used was in tournaments, but these were artistic, impractical pieces of armor. The symbolic and ceremonial devices that encompassed chivalry became more secular from war during the late 14th and 15th centuries. The famous tournaments, the proving grounds for knights were no longer places for knights to train for battle. The joust and melee became outdates pieces of military strategy. The heralds became less influential and important due to the growing size of armies; it was much more needed to show a collective union with national symbols being used instead of individual coat of arms.
Because the definition of chivalry is up to interpretation, there are many different views on when the notion of chivalry began to decline. If one looks at chivalry through a military aspect which was central to chivalry’s existence, one would look at chivalry as a set of benevolent values regulating war based on the self-preservation among knights. Taking this view it can be seen that chivalry actually began to decline in the 1340s, many of which consider chivalry’s heyday. This is due to an engagement between King Edward III and King Philip VI during the Hundred Years War, where King Philip VI believed it would be better strategy to proclaim it illegal to take prisoners; he did this because he wanted his men to focus on the battle and not securing prisoners for ransom. King Edward III in return signaled it would be illegal to take prisoners, and so both sides slaughtered every person they took. Chivalry can be seen as on decline even before this, in the civil war between Henry III and Simon of Montfort during the 1260s, many brutalities occurred. Many notable knights lost their lives at an encounter at Evesham in 1265 where Simon of Montfort was killed and his body was mutilated with his hands, feet, and head cut off, and his testicles were hung on his nose and stuffed into his mouth. The amount killed at this battle was unprecedented, the historian Richard of Durham believed 10,000 were killed. In comparison, 48 years earlier at the battle of Lincoln in which William Marshal was present; only three men of importance were killed.
In the bloodiest battle of English history at Towton on Palm Sunday of 1461, heralds claim that 20,000 to 28,000 men perished. This is due similar to the engagement between King Edward III and King Philip VI stated earlier, at Towton, the newly appointed King Edward IV ordered his men to take no prisoner, and so the Lancastrians in turn issued the same order, and brutality followed. Many battles that followed would have the same fate. This warfare in the late medieval period can be attributed to a new way of thinking; those who were against the king were considered rebels, and would be treated as so. During the War of Roses, brutality can be attributed to the notion of revenge, where men believed it necessary to uphold family honor and obtain revenge on their fallen fathers and brothers. Philip de Commines observed this happening, “the lords in Egnland killed their enemies; then later the children of their victims gained their revenge when times changed and favoured them and they killed the others”.
Why would chivalrous knights follow such orders? Stated earlier, armies were becoming nationalized, where a government would have a standing paid army, the individual interests of the knights were forced into following national goals and interests. This would kill the knight’s personal honor, if he was caught taking prisoner for ransom his pay would be cut and he may suffer other punishment. In England, it was stated that the gentry had grown tired of the wars and increasingly became disillusioned with going off to war; this would cause the knightly class to shift toward civil aspects of society. The knights could no longer find honor in war, and began to focus on administrative positions and leadership positions of their local communities. The 16th century marked the end of the old concept of the hybrid of knight, courtier, and Christian. The crusading fervor and the ideal Christian knight had vanished and the warrior elite turned into a professional officer class. Thus the idea of an estate of knighthood, with a common goal to uphold justice and protect the weak, was being pared down into the conception of the officer whose goal was the King’s goal.
During the 16th century the notion of a united Christendom vanished with the Reformation, where Christians became more likely to fight with other Christians. This would degrade the concept of a “just war” from religiously motivated and church sanctioned crusades against infidels to recover the Holy Land to wars fought between Christians for completely secular reasons helped in declining the knight’s stature. These ‘just” wars became wars fought with total war mentality, and the use of mercenaries helped fuel it. These mercenaries lived off of spoils of war and ravaged the land and robbed and killed civilians. They didn’t buy into the aristocracy’s idea of ransom because they believed it was just a way for rich knights to deceive them.
Chivalry in the Modern World
The appeal of chivalry had lived on after the traditional armored knight became obsolete. In 1605 Miguel de Cervantes wrote, Don Quixote, a novel that satirized chivalry. It is considered to be the first modern novel that showed that there was a block between the ideal of chivalry and the reality of the modern era. In the 18th century there was a renewed interest in knights and chivalry with the discovery of many medieval manuscripts. This led to writers to use chivalric themes in their writings, and the public bought into it. During the 18th century there was a rise of nationalism, violence in the Napoleonic wars, the introduction of the industrial revolution, all created a desire to return to an era filled with courtesy and courage. An influential knightly work of the nineteenth century was a series of poems called, The Idylls of the King, which retold Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte De’Arthur. Alfred , Lord of Tennyson, the writer of these poems, introduced a new theme, the destruction of Camelot, a perfect kingdom that cannot survive. This could be seen as symbolic of the ideal of chivalry’s inability to survive.
This renewed interest in the romantic genre would suffer during World War I when young men inspired by these renewed concepts of chivalry, went off to war and quickly realized that chivalry could not take place in modern warfare. World War II would set the date when literature would embrace realism, causing knights to have no place in the culture. However, in the 1930s there was a group formed that is now known as the “inklings” who had a interest in medieval literature and the ideals associated with so. These would come out in books, still famous till this day, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. These books dealt with knights and swords, stressed the significance of chivalry, and in Lewis’s case, Christianity. These two authors would give birth to the Fantasy genre, where medievalism and chivalry flourished even more. George R. R. Martin’s series of books, Game of Thrones, came out in 1996, and now even has a series on HBO.
There would also be an interest in knights and chivalry through film. Filmmakers aspire to ensure that their characters embody the qualities of chivalry, honor, loyalty, skill, courage, honesty, and courtliness. They don’t want to have brutish warriors as their main characters so that the audience will relate these chivalric ideals to the modern world. The comedy, Monty Python and the Holy Grail was actually inspired by Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte De’Arthur. This movie exaggerates the ideals of chivalry, for example in one scene, Sir Lancelot runs around just slaughtering everyone, in order to save a damsel in distress. The list of television shows, and films goes on, Star Wars, is influenced from the medieval knight. George Lucas even uses the term knight, in his Jedi Knights, whom are fighters of good who honor a chivalric code. The influence from medieval knighthood to Star Wars in immense, in Star Wars, children go through a similar process that children in medieval England went through. The Jedi Knights would begin training at a Jedi Temple and upon their graduation would become Padawans who would serve under a Jedi, similar to a squire serving under a knight. There are many other characters in other films that are influenced by medieval knights, such as Batman: The Dark Knight, Babylon 5, Knight Rider, etc.
War games have been created to try and imitate the valor and chivalry of the medieval age. There is a variety of war games: chess, board games, roleplaying games, and video games. Dungeons and Dragons was a phenomenon during the 1970s and 1980s, where people would pick characters to role-play and would enter into a imaginative world ran by a Dungeon Master. The computer has allowed many people to get their fill of chivalry and knights. With the genre of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games (MMORPG), people pick a character and embark on quests with friends and strangers online in an attempt to level their character. Games like World of Warcraft, have 11 million online players, these players have to make decisions on morality. This immense following shows that there is still indeed an interest in chivalry.
Many people want more than just computer games, and this gave rise to medieval reenactments. Medieval Times is a famous themed dinner, w here patrons go to eat like they are in the medieval ages, and watch jousts. There is also the advent of the Renaissance Fairs where jousts also occur, although at these it is between professional jousters, and not actors. There are clubs devoted to being real knights, often ran by history buffs, the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) is probably the biggest of these with thirty thousand members. In the SCA the members take on the role of a character, nd pick a name that has to be approved by the organizations heraldry expert. They then have to attend all events in medieval clothing,
Conclusion
Chivalry has had a profound impact on Medieval England’s culture through literature, religion and lifestyle. The term chivalry is one that cannot be defined, as it is a lifestyle, not a obvious code. Chivalry stressed the qualities of courage, loyalty, strength, skill, and military expertise. Chivalry had a wide array of influences, religion, literature, people of history such as William Marshal, all of which chivalry in turn influenced back. Religion cemented the knight’s place in history by declaring the Crusades, and gave the knights of the time, a way to fight a “just” war. Literature gave knights characters to try and live up to, it gave them role-models. Writings like, The Song of Roland and Le Morte De’Arthur transformed the knights image from a brute to a role model, or a celebrity. Knights created their own culture; they created a systematic method of which to obtain knighthood. They established ceremonies for dubbing of knights, and had several off shoots created to serve them, such as the heralds. The knights established places for them to practice and display their skills, by making tournaments.
Tournaments were crucial in the development, promotion, and sustaining of the culture and the performance of chivalry. Chivalry although romanticized in literature and tournaments was a martial ideal. It was a contradictory code in this area, where during war there were huge horrors being committed by so-called chivalrous knights. William Marshal himself participated in cheap tricks. The concept of chivalry helped moderate war; however, it was mainly between the aristocracy where they had a common respect for each other. The Crusades were another tool in cementing the chivalrous knight in history. Richard the Lionheart would become one of the most famous English knights ever, and helped establish the role model of chivalry. Knightly orders were created during the Crusades, and had two influential orders, the Knights Templars and the Knights Hospitallers.
The decline of chivalry and knights can be attributed to many factors. New advents in military tactics, new fortresses, professional armies and the invention of gunpowder all led to the demise of the traditional armored knight. The knight and chivalry would be revived in the 18th century with new romances being written, like the poems, The Idylls of the King. Chivalry would have an important role as well in the 20th and 21st century in film and literature. Through all of this research and information, one will find that chivalry did indeed have a profound impact upon medieval culture, as well as present day culture, it never died. Chivalry was and is more than just being polite towards women, it is a way of life that encompasses all qualities in which knight’s held in high regard, being courteous to women was just one of them. Johan Huizinga was right when he claimed that next to religion, chivalry was the strongest of ideas which filled the minds and hearts of those men of another age.
The present day use of chivalry is a poor reflection of what the term once meant. Today it is used to give a sense of fair play, being polite towards women, and has a courteous old fashioned quality to it . In the middle ages the term, used in a broad sense, encompassed the body of knights themselves and anything regarding them and their role in society. In a more precise fashion, chivalry was a complex and apparent contradictory code of behavior to which a knight was supposed to obey, and measure themselves. Even though chivalry was mainly associated with the military, it presented ideals of behavior both on and off the battlefield, and became an ideology that was to be incorporated in all aspects of its members’ lives. This is just an attempt to put a definition to the term, as it is almost impossible to define the word because it was more an outlook than a doctrine, more a lifestyle than an obvious ethical code. There were a set of qualities central to its existence which included; loyalty, generosity, dedication, courage, and courtesy, which were all praised by the military class whom believed the ideal knight should possess.
What cannot be disputed is that chivalry, in the sense of an aristocratic value system had a wide influence on medieval society. The aristocracy in which this code lived constituted the social as well as the military elite, and because of this, had a great influence on medieval culture. In medieval England, chivalry was felt in political life, social behavior, in the conduct of disputes, in funeral rituals, even in architecture and design. Its impact on the culture of society was definitely real and extensive. The historian, Johan Huizinga wrote, “Combing the records in which chivalry is little mentioned, [historians] have succeeded in presenting a picture of the middle ages in which economic and social points of view are so dominant that one tends at times to forget that, next to religion, chivalry was the strongest of the ideas which filled the minds and hearts of those men of another age”. The origin of the term chivalry comes from the combination of the French word of chevalier, a knight, and the word chevalerie, the skill in the art of horsemanship. The word is difficult to define because it had so many ways it could have been used. In early texts it just meant a group of heavily armed horsemen, a group of chevaliers. Other times it was used to define a knightly order, similar to a religious order. Sometimes it was used to describe the warrior class whose main purpose was to defend their country and their church. In essence knights and chivalry could not be separated and romance writers allowed the ideology to flourish.
Chivalry can be seen as having three separate influences on its development, each bringing in a different set of values. The first influence was the warrior’s ethic which stressed bravery in battle, physical strength, military expertise, skill on horseback, the knowledge of how to use the lance and sword. One can see these ideals in tales from the 11th century, such as the Song of Roland, which is an epic poem that exemplifies chivalric ideals of being brave, fighting against overwhelming odds, loyalty, and friendship. Another book published in the 11th century that helped in chivalry’s development was the History of William Marshal, which is the biography of the famous William Marshal. The biography tells of William’s skill at tournaments, battles, and his wise advice he would give. William Marshal was known as the “flower of chivalry” and taught chivalry to King Henry III as a child and he also served under Richard the Lionheart in the third crusade. In the biography his biographer Geoffrey de Charny wrote, “…if you desire that your arms be remembered, recognized, and adorned above others, seek constantly and diligently to perform deeds of arms. And when god grants you the good fortune to find them, do your duty wisely and boldly, fearing nothing except shame, striving with the skill of your hand and the effort of your body to as great a degree as your powers can extend in order to inflict damage on your opponents, always being among the first in battle. By so doing you will receive greater recognition for your achievements from your friends and enemies…” . This passage tells of how one can obtain glory and recognition through being an expert in battle, one of chivalry’s cornerstone ideals.
Chivalry also had an influence from religion. Church officials wanted to try and reduce the amount of violence happening among the knight aristocracy, so they took two ways to do so. Firstly, the church tried to limit the effects of warfare by putting restrictions, such as places for it to occur, times, people, sort of like the Geneva conventions today. The second and much more influential and impactful was harnessing the knights’ energy into church defined goals, such as the Crusades. Knights accepted this, and didn’t refrain from following religious standards, however, t they did refuse to follow the church’s definition of themselves; that violence was an evil, even if it is a necessary one. Knights saw honor and glory in war and refused to accept the restrictive definition that the church defined them as. The Song of Roland is the epitome of this, by glorifying war and a notion of cooperation between the religious and secular powers in maintaining social order. This is when knights began to see themselves as a societal order bound by god whose purpose of fighting was an honorable and necessary one. This transition can be seen through the formation of the rituals of which one is dubbed. These elegant rituals mirrored religious ceremony, although the church did not recognize it as a sacrament. Chivalrous principles were created and recreated constantly between the relationship of a knight’s real behavior and the literary and artistic depictions of knightly behavior.
Chivalric Literature
Literature had a profound impact upon chivalry and chivalry had an impact upon literature. In the medieval aristocratic society, chivalric activity and cultural expectation were nearly indistinguishable. Well received by the aristocracy, romance writers dealt with themes dealing of bravery, a knight’s quest for honor, and the romance between a knight and his lady. These themes interested the aristocracy because they saw themselves as a military elite class, but were also a social elite class which influenced numerous types of people. Lower class knights, squires, the lesser gentry, and townsmen were all influenced by the chivalric aristocracy. Chivalric culture played a very important role in shaping medieval society’s culture as a whole. Not only did it influence literature, but also influenced architecture and other arts. The chivalric culture began to emerge during the 12th century with the renaissance period taking place and Europe undergoing an enormous intellectual awakening. This new thinking caused pessimism to fade out, to be replaced by a new restored feeling that viewed humans with dignity and new abilities. Troubadours began to rise bringing a new way to voice literature which displayed a new variety of tenderness and emotion that was not seen before. Chivalry was able to rise and thrive in this new environment; it transformed the image of the knight from simply a warrior to a role model, and a romanticized figure. Along with the intellectual awakening was a cultural awakening which really made the chivalric culture emergence possible.
In medieval England, chivalry took on four main forms in a broad sense. The first three are related because they deal with literature. The first form was a love of the new literature of Arthurian romance, which the author Geoffrey of Monmouth made popular. The second was the new desire for vernacular poetry which talked if rightneousness by dealing with the adventures of local heroes and a family’s past. The third form was the English aristocracy’s desire to learn about England’s history. The fourth form which doesn’t relate to the first three was the new development of visual symbolism, referred to as heraldry. These four formed the main elements of the chivalric culture that emphasized romance heroism and display.
Before Geoffrey of Monmouth’s writings of King Arthur, there was an earlier genre that was similar called the chansons de geste meaning “songs of deeds”. The chansons de geste were medieval verse epics that emerged in France. Most of the Chanson de Geste’s followed heroic deeds of famous leaders, in particular the Emperor Charlemagne. The chansons de geste are separated into three groups, the Geste du Roi, the Geste de Garin de Monglane, and the Geste de Doon de Mayence. The Geste du Roi meaning “Deeds of the King” tells about Charlemagne’s battle against the pagans, Saxons , and the Saracens. It also includes the aforementioned, The Song of Roland, one of the oldest and most famous works. The Geste de Garin de Monglane tells of how Charlemagne and his paladins marched and protected their kingdoms. The Geste de Doon de Mayence tells of uprisings within the nobility and how they were put down. As these epic poems were rewritten, new values surrounding chivalry began to be implemented, such as mercy for the defeated, trying to service and adore women, and the growth of knights’ morals. During this evolution troubadours’ love poetry became very popular and together the new epic poems and love poems created the romance genre. Another important development of chivalric literature was the three matters. In the chanson de Saisnes, another chanson de geste, whose theme was the wars of Charlemagne, stated that, “there are three matters above all about which every man should know something: the matter of France, the matter of Britain, and the matter of Rome the Great”. These three matters would have a great impact on chivalric literature, and contained the best subject matter of chivalrous literature.
The romance genre flourished between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries often dealing with a knight or nobleman pursuing a lady of the court. The chivalry that was engrained in the love poetry during this time influenced many important figures. Duke William IX of Aquitaine was a famous author of poetry and his ideals of chivalry thrived at his court. His granddaughter, Eleanor, was the wife of Louis VII of France, and later, of Henry II of England, and she would also mother the famous Richard the Lionheart. Eleanor was a great patron of literature and troubadours; she also had a great interest in the matter of Britain, which focused on the feats of King Arthur. Geoffrey of Monmouth was the author who created the Arthurian tales in his History of the Kings of Britain, which was published between 1135 and 1139 in England. The matter of Britain had fewer sources for history unlike the other two matters, which allowed authors such as Geoffrey of Monmouth more freedom in writing. Geoffrey of Monmouth used reliable sources such as Bede, Gildas and Nennius for his Arthurian tales, but also used Welsh legends to fill in where the legitimate sources had no information . Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain gave the base for all Arthurian authors that would follow.
Many famous characters each with different characteristics would rise from Arthurian legend. English writers would use Geoffrey’s version of Sir Gawain, by keeping his attributes of being an energetic, headstrong, and full of valor. Sir Gawain’s character appealed to English writers especially due to his manly qualities, and they saw him as the standard of the fighting knight. Sir Gawain becomes popular in the late fourteenth century with the writing of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight where he is shown as brave, valiant, and the epitome of chivalrous. When it’s time for him to die, Sir Gawain’s loyalty is highlighted and he becomes the aspiration in which English knights want to live up to in the Hundred Years War. Another famous knight to arise from Arthurian legend is Sir Lancelot, who is known as the most human because of his inability to stay away from Queen Guinevere, Arthur’s wife. Sir Lancelot’s character is made famous by the author Sir Thomas Malory in his book, Le Morte d’ Arthur written in 1485. Malory saw Sir Lancelot as the model for a practical knight rather than an unrealistic one. Another knight known as the pure knight is Sir Galahad who is introduced in the thirteenth century, Quest for the Holy Grail and also in later in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur. Galahad is is an entirely pure, free of sin knight who is able to find the Holy Grail.
Out of the Arthurian legends came the notion of the quest which was a matter where a knight could prove his worth and to right wrongs. It was the perfect medium to praise knighthood, and to examine the relationship of chivalric practices to the civilization in medieval Europe. The quest for the Holy Grail was linked with Arthurian legends after the writer Chretien de Troyes introduced it. Another symbolic object that arises is King Arthur’s Round Table where knights must display chivalric superhuman qualities to obtain a spot. Aforementioned the Knights of the Round Table are often flawed, whether giving into love, jealousy or disloyalty.
Knighthood
The knight himself changed over the 500 years in which he dominated due to new developments in weaponry and the armorer’s response. The popular depiction of a knight is that he was just a warrior, but the knight had many skills other than combative ones. The knight was most definitely part of a warrior class, but he also made up the political and social elite as well. This enabled him with the ability to finance the expensive resources necessary to being a knight, such as armor, weapons, and horses. It also gave the knight the time necessary in honing his skills in battle tactics, horsemanship, and other essential skills used on the battlefield. The social status of knights began very low, in the 11th centuries they were nothing more than armed servants. These men were seen as violent and dangerous, nothing like the chivalrous knights portrayed in romance literature. Since they were servants and not wealthy their armor and weapons were provided by their lords.
By the 12th century their status and rank in society had risen and every lord was a knight, even if every knight was not a lord. These lords began to start a training method where a young noble would become a knight. It would begin when the child was seven where the parents would decide if the child would join the church or not. If not he would begin his knighthood training. The skills necessary to fight at the level a knight does took a long time to develop. It is similar to modern day athletes, where they begin their training during childhood in order to become elite in their sport. The goal was to create a person capable of handling a lance or sword easily while riding a horse. There was more to military skills as well; these young nobles would also be educated in the basics of reading and writing, as well as how to properly act in court. When the young noble would become a knight it would be thought that he had come of age, but also that he encompassed his moral responsibilities. Quite often noble boys would be sent away to a lord’s court to be trained as knights. Paul the Deacon described how it was common for the early Lombard kings to send their sons to the court of a foreign lordThey would often go to an uncle’s court and it was preferred to be the mother’s brother’s court rather than the father’s brother’s court. It was preferred this way because a paternal uncle would see his nephews as rivals because of how the inheritance worked and would not have a close relationship. However, a boy’s maternal uncle would gladly take in his nephews and establish a close relationship with them because they were no threat to his inheritance. Maternal uncles tended to be closer to age to the young boys as well, since young noble women married much older men than themselves. Another way for boys to train was to go to a powerful duke or count’s court where a whole group of young men would be training. This would create close relationships throughout a region due to noblemen being close friends with other noblemen since they trained together as boys.
Part of the boy’s education was to learn to read and write, both in the vernacular and Latin. They would also learn how to do math. These skills were necessary for when they would become adults because they needed to know how to understand contracts and also be able to keep track of their income and duties. They were exposed to Classical Latin authors who were believed to be examples of how to behave in the secular world; to be modest, have restraint, and have self-control. They were also educated in religion with a castle chaplain supervising their education. They would learn the main doctrines of Christian theology and this religious education also helped strengthen their knowledge of Latin. Besides spending time in the classroom, the young noblemen would spend numerous hours riding horses and learning to fight. This training was extremely crucial for the young noble as being talented at fighting on horseback was the ultimate goal. The boys would start off riding ponies and using wooden swords and then would progressively advance to horses and steel blades. They would have drills such as trying to hit a ring that hung from a string with their lance or riding at a quintain which was a shield attached to a revolving arm on one side and a sandbag on the other. If one was not riding fast enough he would be struck by the sandbag.
Usually an old knight would supervise the boys’ training and would start their training off as little more than games, but would intensify the training as the boys grew older. They would learn how to properly care for their horses and also grow used to wearing heavy armor for hours without becoming tired. The boys were also taught how to hunt properly, the right way to track, kill, and cut up their kill. This was a good way to practice for warfare, hunting also showed social status and power while providing food for the knightly households. Hunting was an important way for groups of knights, a lord and his household to practice riding in arms together. In these groups the knights practiced horsemanship, the use of weapons, and how to read the terrain. Hunting also created chemistry amongst the knights which translated onto the battlefield. Besides doing schoolwork and military exercises the boys also had to go through extensive training in courtesy. This taught young aristocrats how to behave appropriately in a polite society, which meant speaking in a cultured way, dressing properly, keeping their hygiene in check, and also practicing arts such as dancing, music, and poetry. Even though knights were violent with a lance and sword they always wanted to see themselves as sophisticated. The young nobles would also learn how to play games, such as chess which was considered appropriate for the nobility. The boys were also expected to be able to talk with ladies properly without being shy.
During the training the young noble would be known as a page. The page would serve knights during their own education as well as doing menial tasks. They would set tables for dinner, carry messages, and helping a knight dress. These duties were meant to help integrate the young men into the courts and give them the knowledge of what went on. The pages would also greatly admire the knights they served and would inspire them to work harder at their training. As the page would grow into manhood and get further along in his training he would become a squire. The squire would accompany their knight into tournaments and battle to help them with their armor, weapons, and the care of their horse. Basically squires had obtained the skills necessary in being a knight, but had not gone through the formal knighting ceremony. The ceremony had become very expensive in the late 13th century and many squires could not afford it and ended up just living their adulthood living as knights without the title. Huge feasts and tournaments would be held once a group of youths had been knighted. It is comparable to the present day students graduation from college where these groups of boys had entered training at a young age and had been dedicated for many years. It called for a feast and tournament play where the new knights could show off their skills. The high cost of these parties were one of the reasons many men who were fully able to become knights remained squires.
These ceremonies of dubbing knights took on great symbolism and embodied religious and chivalric values. The first known fully developed knighting ceremony was held in 1128 for Geoffrey, the future count of Anjou. Ramon Lull described this process in his Ordene de Chevalerie where he showed the process Geoffrey went through. In Geoffrey’s ceremony he took a ritual bath, he was then dressed in a gold tunic and a purple cloak with a white belt, and was taken before King Henry I of England. He was then given gold spurs to put on, given a shield with lions painted upon it, and a sword. He was then dubbed a knight along with thirty other knights, and once they were knights King Henry distributed gifts of horses and arms. Lull puts each part of the ceremony with Christian symbolism; the bath is similar to a baptism and signifies cleansing from sin, the white belt signifies chastity, and the sword is has sharp edges which reminds the newly appointed knight of his obligation to protect the weak and uphold justice. The spurs represented the knight’s skill in horsemanship. Not all ceremonies were the same; some were simply a wise old knight giving the squire his sword and spurs, possibly slapping him or kissing him to declare that he was now a knight. It was in the 13th century where fully developed ceremonies took place, like the one described by Lull. Some ceremonies involved church officials, where on the eve of becoming a knight, the candidate would be bathed in rose water, after which, he would attend mass. The priest would then give the aspiring knight a slap on the hand and would pray for God’s blessing on the aspirant’s knighthood. The priest would then give the knight a blessed sword from the altar as well as golden spurs. This created two strands of ceremonies the secular and the religious with the former being more expected.
Stated earlier, King Henry I distributed arms and horses to the newly appointed knights, this is an age old custom that can be seen in pre- chivalric literature. In the story Beowulf, Wiglaf tells how the hero gave arms to those who were allowed to join his war band. This is where the idea of “dubbing” one to knighthood comes from. The French word adouber, to dub, originally meant to equip a man with arms. It is also used to describe in the knighting of a knight and became the common use of the word, to dub someone a knight. The newly appointed knight would take on the honor and status in whomever did the dubbing. Blood was indeed important to a man’s standing in society, but whomever he was dubbed a knight was possibly just as important. It was a way of social mobility of a person with no lineage of nobility to join the rank of knighthood. Sir Thomas Malory depicts this in his Le Morte d’Arthur,
“FORTHWITHAL there came a poor man into the court, and brought with him a fair young man of eighteen years of age riding upon a lean mare; and the poor man asked all men that he met, Where shall I find King Arthur? Yonder he is, said the knights, wilt thou anything with him? Yea, said the poor man, therefore I came hither. Anon as he came before the king, he saluted him and said: O King Arthur, the flower of all knights and kings, I beseech Jesu save thee. Sir, it was told me that at this time of your marriage ye would give any man the gift that <82>he would ask, out except that were unreasonable. That is truth, said the king, such cries I let make, and that will I hold, so it apair not my realm nor mine estate. Ye say well and graciously, said the poor man; Sir, I ask nothing else but that ye will make my son here a knight..”
This enforced the desire of having a popular and noble lord to appoint the aspiring knight to knighthood in romance. This idea of youths seeking the honor of having someone of high status declaring them knights can be routinely seen in other epics and romances where they sought out Charlemagne or King Arthur to do so. In real life it often went to whomever supervised their training such as the uncle.
In the later middle ages young aspiring knights were still concerned with the status of whoever was knighting them, but it had been tweaked. In the thirteenth century aspiring knights wanted to be knighted by knights who had established a name for themselves by their expertise and skill of being a knight. This would reflect each parties honor and reputation because the men doing the knighting would want to knight deserving individuals that would not bring shame to their name. This is how chivalry was flourishing during this time because it showed how each man wanted to be successful and also select men of honor to succeed them. This was common on the eve of battle when men believed being knighted would improve their strength and virtue in battle and even after the battle if the individual displayed certain chivalrous attributes. The former can be seen in the romance of Durmant le Galois which tells of how the hero Durmart knighted twenty noble squires before a battle and how the idea of chivalry was enforced.
After this mass dubbing, Durmart made a speech to his men, “…now you are knights: and it is fitting that I should tell you something of what appertains to chivalry. A Knight must be hardy, courteous, generous, loyal and of fair speech…He has a right to the title of knighthood who has proved himself in arms and thereby won the praise of men. Seek therefore this day to do deeds that will deserve to be remembered, for every new knight should make a good beginning”. This showed how the act of becoming a knight would encourage men to fight vigorously. Regarding the dubbing of knights after battle due to exemplified bravery, an example can be seen in Jean Froissart’s version of a speech made by King James of Portugal after a victory in which he held a mass knighting of 60 men. In his speech he declares, “ …this order of chivalry is so high and so noble, that he who is a knight should have no dealing with anything that is low, with vile things or with cowardice, but he should be as hardy and as proud as a lion is in pursuit of his prey….” Both the speeches by Durmart and King James exemplify the impact earlier romances and chansons have had on the idea of being a knight. Both speak about the qualities must have and that the men must be chivalrous in their duties of a knight.
Tourrnaments
Many knights participated in tournaments because they were a perfect place to practice and display their skill. These knights were trained to fight and kill, but society and the church weren’t too keen on the idea of uncontrolled violence. Society and the knights created two venues where they could release their urge to fight and kill, the crusades and the tournament. People often confuse tournaments and jousts as being the same thing, but they are different. The tournament was a mass activity where lots of action occurred. At the core, it was a massive mock battle involving hundreds sometimes thousands of knights fighting across a big open area.The jousts were single events of combat where knights would face off on horseback in a confined space. Jousts would go along with tournaments and be an important feature of tournament festivities, and beginning in the 13th century jousts would be the preferred event of knights. By the 12th century, knights were so obsessed with the desire to show off their skills that the line between war and games often became unclear. During times of war the besieged would grow bored and would sometimes hold military games with each other. This regular participation in tournaments allowed the knights to bond together as a group, developing the chemistry of battle which united them as a martial class and bound them together as members of a chivalrous community. Tourneying was crucial in the development, promotion, and sustaining of the culture and the performance of chivalry.
It is hard to pinpoint a date on when tournaments began being held, but its origins can be seen as far back in epics like , The Song of Roland, “At the game-boards to pass an idle hour; -- Chequers the old, for wisdom most renowned, While fence the young and lusty bachelours.” This tells of the bachelours or young knights having military exercises with each other, while the old play games such as chess to keep the mind occupied with strategy. The more modern and organized tournament that would flourish throughout Europe in the 12th century, was seen in the Arthurian legend. In Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, the term tournament is used often and the tales of knights proving “marvelous deeds of arms” are mentioned. The tournaments popularity would become widespread enough in the early 12th century to cause concern amongst the church. In 1130 the Pope, Innocent II declared that any knight slain at a tournament would be denied a proper Christian burial. The way the tournaments worked in the 12th century would be, a place be determined, usually on the border of two towns so not one has jurisdiction, and would be wide open. In the case of England, Richard I’s tournaments would be between Warwick and Kenilworth, and would usually consist of two teams, the Northern Englishmen and Southern Englishmen. If one would lose in the tournament and become a captive of another knight his armor, weapons, and horse would become the victor’s spoils of victory along with his person being held for ransom.
In the early days of tournaments, there were no set of official rules and the mock battle that would occur was very similar to real battle. There was however certain things that would be frowned upon such as the use of arrows and bolts. Sometimes emotions would flare, in what would become known as the “little battle of Chalons” the Count of Chalons had grabbed King Edward I of England by the neck in an attempt to unhorse him, the King saw this as cheap and had his footmen intervene causing lots of casualties amongst participating knights and spectators. The two English Kings Richard I and Edward I would devise a set of rules to reduce the bloodshed that would occur at tournaments. Richard I would charge a fee for any knight who wanted to participate in his tournaments; 20 marks for an earl, 10 for a baron, 4 for a landed knight, and 2 marks for a knight with no land.
…no tourneyer,however wealthy he may be, may take as escort more than three squires to serve him…no knight or squire attending a tournament shall carry a pointed sword, nor a pointed knight, nor mace, nor sword with sharpened edge during the event….
Edward I created rules where a knight had a limit on followers, and also enforced the use of blunt weapons. Regulations like this would make the act of participating in a tournament more like a professional sport. Knights could find vast wealth by doing well in tournaments along with creating a celebrity personality. Tournaments would become the sport of choice by the aristocracy and would have an audience which rated the knights’ performances.
One man that really used the tournament system to create a name for himself was the Englishman William Marshal, the earl of Pembroke and man who was to be the regent of England while Henry III came of age . William Marshal’s story is almost a Hollywood fairytale, there was no reason Marshal’s name would be remembered before he entered the world of tournaments. Marshal was a younger brother and second son of his father which meant he was not going to receive any inheritance and he would have to find his own way to success. Marshal was sent to his mother’s cousin who was a baron during his early teens and through his patronage would be able to participate in tournaments.
Only that day had the Marshal been a poor man as regards possessions and horses, and now he had four and a half, fine mounts and handsome, thanks to God. He also had hacks and palfreys, fine pack-horses and harnesses. The tournament disbanded...They paid the Marshal great honour and treated him very courteously, more so than they had done before.
William would be referred to as “The Marshal” and flourished in even his first tournament taking prominent knights such s Sir Philip de Valognes prisoner and collecting fine prizes.
Through his tour of tournaments his great feats caught the attention of Henry II who would have William mentor his son. William Marshal flourished under the Kings liberality, by being able to continue his career in tournaments where he made vast amounts of wealth from prizes and ransoms. When Henry III would die in 1183, the Marshal would join his brother Richard the Lionheart, and would gain more prizes, his big achievement during this time was marrying Isabel de Clare, the heiress of the earldom of Pembroke, which would give him one of the biggest inheritances in the kingdom. When it came time to decide the English crown regent after King John’s death it came down to two candidates, William Marshal and Ranulph, 6th Earl of Chester, according to William Marshal’s biography, The History of William Marshal. Ranulph conceded the position to Marshal claiming, “You are so good a knight, so fine a man, so feared, so loved and so wise, that you are considered one of the first knights of the world. I say to you in all loyalty that you must be chosen.. The Marshal would be forever known as one the most successful knights, and truly a great story of owning no land to becoming the regent king of England. However, not all knights on the tournament circuit were nearly as successful as William Marshal. The tournaments were expensive; a knight had to supply himself with armor, weapons, horses, and entry fees. If a knight would be unhorsed or taken prisoner during a tournament he would leave much poorer than when he entered. Many young knights lost everything their fathers had given them and many had to mortgage their lands.
Tournaments allowed knights to display and participate in chivalry, martial skills, courtesy towards women, and Christian values. These tournaments were more than sporting events to the knights that participated in them, it was what they would use to set each other apart and define themselves. Women’s role in the tournament was a big one, even though they were not allowed to enter a tournament, their audience inspired the knights fighting. It’s safe to say that the woman’s status in the Middle Ages was not one to envy, but this was different in the tournament setting. Stands were raised for spectators as far back as the 1170s, and these were mainly for women. These women would look over the lists of knights and watch the opening jousts of the day. These women were vocal during these events and would sit for hours on end reminiscing about part tournaments. Some say the women were the memory of the tournament and since they held the tournaments memory they were necessarily its arbiters. The women became very involved in the festivities and would often show their emotions, such as showing concern for knights laid on their backs from a violent joust hit. At the feasts during tournaments the women were very involved with the men, they danced, ate, sang, and talked, all sorts of interaction with the men.
The mingling of men and women would lead to more than flirting, but if one would be caught for adultery the consequences would be dire.This intermingling would be condemned by the Cardinal James de Vitry:
There is plenty of the seventh deadly sin, called Lust, since the tournament goers are out to entice shameless women, if the achieve prowess in arms; they are also accustomed to carry certain female tokens, as it they were their banners.
The romances of the time were full of men who received gestures and marks from their ladies to wear in tournament. The most common token to wear were sleeves that attached to the top of a knight’s helmet. If a lady saw her favorite knight wearing another ladies sleeve she would become saddened.
The tournament was composed of many different events. The melee was an event which could last all day and went on across a large area of land. There were areas throughout the melee course called refuges where a knight could rest and catch his breath. The goal of the melee was to unhorse as many of the opposing team’s knights as possible. If a knight would become injured or unhorsed he was supposed to surrender, if he failed to do so the dominant knight and his squires would drag him back to the refuge area. The melee was divided into two teams and the leaders of the two sides were determined by the highest ranking lords present. A lot went into making sure that both sides were evenly matched; the two sides made sure each were equal in number of knights, and had similar distribution of experienced to inexperienced knights. The team with the most knights still mounted on their horses would be deemed the victors. At the end of the day all the knights would take baths, tend to their wounds, and if knights had been unhorsed they would negotiate to buy back any equipment they had lost. Another event at the tournament, which would become the event of choice over the melee in the late Middle Ages was the joust. The joust took place on a long narrow strip separated by a barrier where the knights would charge towards each other. The objective was to strike the opponent on the shield with a lance and force him off of his horse. If both knights were dismounted simultaneously they would commence a swordfight on foot. The joust also had its place in society other than tournaments. It was used as a ‘trial by battle’ where two knights would joust to see who was in the right. This trial by battle was fought with sharpened weapons and would often end in a fight to the death. This would be banned by the church after the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215.
The use of heraldry, the systematic use of hereditary emblems on the shield of a knight or nobleman can be seen as a response to tournaments. It was very important for knights to know who they were fighting in a tournament so that if they had unhorsed or hoped to take the opponent prisoner they would know the significance of victory. It also aided the audience in knowing who was who and allowed them to judge individual performances. First displayed on the knight’s shield, the heraldic insignias were also placed on the knight’s surcoat, horses, seals, and tombs. Heraldry became symbolic of family pride and the culture of nobility in general. The men placed in charge of heraldry would become known as the heralds. They found business by staging and attending the ceremonies of tournament. The heralds did more than design and track a knight’s coat of arms; they also would travel announcing about a coming event. They would be hired by knights and would announce for them, and cheer them on during contests. William Marshal would encounter a herald at tournaments, Henry le Norreis, who would welcome the Marshal’s appearance at tournaments with, “God aid the Marshal! ”. The status of the herald would elevate in the 13th century, and would create a hierarchy with the title of King of Arms at the top. Heralds would wear his master’s colors, and were regularly paid by their master. The heralds would act as the recorders of chivalry that would be on display at tournaments. The heralds also played an important part in the field of battle where they would record promotions to knighthoods, and also record the names and arms of knights whom displayed impressive skill in the field. They also obtained immunity from hostile action during battle, and served as messengers. In the 15th century the men who held the highest position in the hierarchy of heralds, the King of Arms would play a significant role in diplomacy.
The church condemned tournaments from the very beginning, the tournaments put men’s lives in danger which in turn put their souls at risk. Tournaments were very dangerous and the sin of murder was easily attainable, even if unintentional. Tournaments were also the place knights went to show off their skills, thus creating pride in themselves which is a sin. The church would ban tournaments, but the tournaments were too well-established, and the church’s authority was too weak to enforce. A preacher named John Bromyard, who had his lands impoverished by tournaments, would condemn them as well. He would tell horror stories to scare knights from participating in tournaments; he would say tourneyers would suffer in hell with armor nailed to them and cannot be taken off, they are given evil smelling sulphurous baths and then afterwards , instead of the warm embraces of wanton young women they are obliged to endure the amorous attentions of lascivious toads. The church encouraged knights to fight in the crusades, instead of for pride in themselves, they could fight for God. The idea of chivalry supported this by believing it was necessary to participate in a crusade in order to obtain perfect knighthood. However, many knights only expected to go on one crusade, and found no harm in participating in tournaments.
In the 14th century the Church came to the conclusion that there was no harm in allowing knights to participate in tournaments. The Church took the ground that tournaments helped knights prepare themselves for the crusades where they would fight for God. The crusade which once was the reason Popes banned tournaments became the reason why the Church decided to lift the ban. Tournaments were the perfect place to recruit for crusades, because there was an abundance of knights, and they received peer pressure to take up the cross and fight for heavenly glory. Once the ban had been formally withdrawn, it was believed that an aspiring knight should make his way through three steps; perform in jousts, secondly participate in tournaments, and lastly war.
Chivalry in War
The idea of chivalry was romanticized in literature and legend, but at its core it was indeed a martial notion. Johan Huizinga saw chivalry as an idolized concept, one that was not close to reality. War in Europe during the Middle Ages was brutal, with the peasants taking the brunt of the violence rather than the knights. England in the Hundred Years War carried out brutish tactics against the French populace with aims to demoralize the enemy and hope for negotiations. Edward the Black Prince destroyed a dozen cities and more than 3,700 villages in a campaign against the French according to the Anonimalle Chronicle. Did the people of European society see this kind of war, one with cheap tricks, and attacks on the weak as chivalric? William Marshal, as talked about already, was known as the “Flower of Chivalry”, yet he participated in devious tricks. Men of the time did not have time for the abstract idealism of chivalry, but had to be practical. The mass killings of peasants raised concern amongst society, and the Church tried to quell this violent epidemic. This would become known as the Peace of God movement which consisted of a series of councils that would place strong penalties on individuals that attacked churches or peasants, such as excommunication.
This Peace of God movement would change in the 13th century with thinkers like e St. Thomas Aquinas, who believed how a war should be just. He believed people non involved in the fighting of the war should have certain rights, but his ideas would fail because church doctrine supported war that was just, which was open for interpretation. People saw the devastation of war as a punishment from God and if peasants supported their lord, then they were just as wrong as him and were open for punishment. Knights ravaging an pillaging villages can be attributed to the high costs of war, and since knights had to finance their own gear, believed they were entitled to the spoils of victory. It was also very lucrative for men who were not the first born and were not going to receive their father’s inheritance. It allowed them to finance their estates and retain their nobility, for knights with no land it opened opportunity for social advancement by becoming rich off of spoils of war.
Chivalry moderated brutish acts in war, but it was mainly benefited the knights who were apart of the chivalric class. Chivalry was held rather on the sidelines of battle rather than the war itself. Before battles or during sieges knights would fight each other one on one, where chivalric virtues would be in place. One can make the argument however, that chivalry was deeply rooted in tournaments which helped improve his horsemanship, and mastering the use of weapons when wearing armor, thus the chivalric culture was essential for any knight participating in battle. Chivalry also enforced mental attributes essential in battle, such as courage. In battle a group of knights touched with chivalric pride could have the upper hand. An example would be the battle at Verneuil during the Hundred Years War where a small group of English knights were outnumbered and out armed by the French forces. According to the military historian, Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred Burne the battle of Verneuil was one of the great successes of the English during the Hundred Years War, ranking up there with Poitiers and Agincourt. Burne believed that the French army had no desire to fight that day, and the Englishmen’s mental strangeness attributed by a chivalry mindset led to victory.
In November of 1095 the Pope Urban II would call upon the Christian knights of Europe to travel to the Holy Land of Jerusalem and liberate it from Muslim power, beginning a series of “Holy Wars” that would define the knight in history.
"All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power of God with which I am invested. O what a disgrace if such a despised and base race, which worships demons, should conquer a people which has the faith of omnipotent God and is made glorious with the name of Christ! With what reproaches will the Lord overwhelm us if you do not aid those who, with us, profess the Christian religion! Let those who have been accustomed unjustly to wage private warfare against the faithful now go against the infidels and end with victory this war which should have been begun long ago. Let those who for a long time, have been robbers, now become knights. Let those who have been fighting against their brothers and relatives now fight in a proper way against the barbarians. Let those who have been serving as mercenaries for small pay now obtain the eternal reward. Let those who h ave been wearing themselves out in both body and soul now work for a double honor. Behold! on this side will be the sorrowful and poor, on that, the rich; on this side, the enemies of the Lord, on that, his friends. Let those who go not put off the journey, but rent their lands and collect money for their expenses; and as soon as winter is over and spring comes, let hem eagerly set out on the way with God as their guide."
The Pope promised knights that all of their sins would be forgiven and that their journey to hell due to their thievery and violence would be cancelled. The Pope refers to the knights unjustly fighting their brothers and relatives as their participation in tournaments, and now offers the solution of becoming a holy warrior instead of a tourneyer. Crusading would raise the knight’s estate, making it similar to being a priest in the Church. Crusading was well accepted by the people of Europe because it was an activity in which the knight could obtain distinction.
England’s involvement in the Crusades began with Richard the Lionheart’s involvement in the Third Crusade in the 1190s. England had participated slightly before the Third Crusade, with a few going east in the 1090s and in the 1140s. Men who wanted to contribute did so by giving donations to the Church. Comparing England’s involvement and support in the early years of crusading to that of the rest of Europe, it was very little. This can be due to the fact that, crusaders participation relied on the involvement of their lord or king, and during the First Crusade King William was an unprecedented secular man and had no interest in fighting a holy war. During the Second Crusade, England was in a civil war and was unable to participate. It was during the years where Richard fought in wars against his father, Henry II , that Richard made a name for himself. Starting in 1185 there were a series of wars and reconciliations between the old king Henry and Richard. The only person this did any good for at the time was King Philip of France.When Richard I came to power in England in 1118 things would change and he would become one of the most important and famous figures that would take part in the crusades.
News came to the West on July 4th,1187 that the army of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem had been utterly destroyed by Saladin and the Saracens, and that Saladin had entered the city of Jerusalem on October 2nd. This came as a surprise to everyone, no one expected the Christians at Jerusalem to be conquered in such a way. During the conquering of Jerusalem the Christians lost the True Cross along with the Holy City which shocked every nobleman and lord, who knew their people were upset that they were fighting with each other while such holy places and items were at stake. When the news came to England, Richard was seen as the ideal leader of a Christian army to retake the city of Jerusalem, and Richard agreed. In 1187 before the news of Jerusalem reached Europe, Richard had taken up the Cross, meaning he had sworn to be a crusader. Shortly after, King Philip of France and King Henry of England followed suit and took up the cross as well, and Europe began to prepare to embark on the Third Crusade.
However, there were a series of delays with the three monarchs. Richard began a war with King Philip, which King Henry joined him in. Richard then turned on King Henry and allied with King Philip against his Father. These quarrels finally ceased when King Henry passed away and Richard became King of England in 1189.
Richard then had to travel to England to be formally coronated and figure out how England would be ran while he was off fighting in a crusade. When Richard was finally ready to embark to Jerusalem the Queen of France died, which caused King Philip to postpone, and Richard did not want to leave without him because he feared leaving England open to attack. The two kings would finally meet in 1190 at Vezelay, France and embark on their journey to the east. It is estimated that Richard had an army of 17,000 men, a massive force in the late 12th century and this was actually paid for by the Saladin tithe, which his father had instituted. Richard on top of the Saladin tithe auctioned off vast amounts of English properties, according to Roger of Howden, “He put up for sale all he had, offices, lordships, earldoms, sheriffdoms, castles, towns, lands, everything”. This would give Richard the necessary resources to engage in an expensive endeavor, that was the crusade.
Having stopped at numerous places along the way to Jerusalem and conquering them, Richard arrived at the Crusader camp at Acre on June 8th 1191; nearly four years after he had officially taken up the Cross. The Crusaders ability to keep control of Acre and a presence in the Middle East was incredible and cannot be attributed to Richard. However, his coming to join the Crusade made a huge difference, his fame had presided him, and every Crusader believed he was the most genius general in all Christendom. The Muslims saw Richard as unequalled among other Christians in wealth, valor, and fame; his conquests of Cyprus and Sicily along his way added to his reputation. Once Richard landed in the port of Acre, he joined the siege of Acre which had lasted for nearly two years; he would be victorious in less than four weeks proving his genius in siege warfare. Richard would prove himself a match for the great Saladin, and have many victories in his campaign for Jerusalem. He scored major victories at Arsuf, Ascalon and al-Hasi. In the end he did fail to regain control of Jerusalem, but he had fought with Saladin so greatly that after two years he was able to negotiate the free access of Christian pilgrims. Richard’s victories in the Holy Land would establish a Christian kingdom in the East for another century, and for the exception of the First Crusade, the Third Crusade was the most successful and came closest to obtaining its objective. Richard departed from Palestine on October 9th, 1192, and had bad luck on his voyage home where he was imprisoned by Henry VI. The five years after his captivity would be disappointing for Richard; he found his lands in bad shape, his brother John had caused unrest, and his French vassals’ loyalty had been damaged by King Philip’s bribes. His presence back in England would stabilize the government and by 1198 he would be again one of the great kings of the world. Attracted to a false report of treasure that was his being withheld, Richard led an attack on the castle of Chalus where a random arrow mortally wounded him. He would die ten days later after much agony. The castle ended up being captured and the knight who shot the arrow. Richard had ordered the knight’s life to be spared, but his followers killed him. The Crusades had essentially lifted the ban on homicide by the Catholic Church when Pope Urban II made his proclamation. This not only allowed homicide it made it praiseworthy if committed by a crusader against non-Christians. This is what created the crusading culture and knights saw themselves as knights of Christ, and it was on this that they formed military orders. The two first orders created were quite different of each other and both set the model for future orders. The first began in 1128 at the Council of Troyes where they accepted the monastic rule of Cistercian monks, becoming a hybrid of monk warriors and would become known as the famous Knights Templars. The other introduced a class of knights into an established order of Augustian hospitallers becoming the Knights Hospitallers. These two would different models for giving military orders; the first was dominantly military based, while the latter combined military with charitable activities. The Knights Templars had their own hierarchy led by a grand master, under whom were three ranks: knights, chaplains, and sergeants. The knights were the central members, and only they were allowed to wear the distinct dress of the order, a white mantle with a large red Latin cross on the back, one that would be most linked with the Crusades. The Knights Hospitallers originally formed to run the hospital of St. John in Jerusalem, and they would then expand. They purchased Estonia from Denmark and became a sovereign power, and once Jerusalem fell to the Muslims the Knights Hospitallers established themselves on the islands of Rhodes and Malta. The Knights Templar were just as successful in the secular world, and created a network in Europe that recruited and collected funds that were then transferred to the Holy Land. The Knight’s Templar’s administrative infrastructure became very efficient and they actually began to hold and transfer money for nobles. They would become a well-established international bank, this was a major success for them, but also led to their downfall. In the early 1300s the Templars wealth and power were envied by King Philip IV of France who was in massive debt to them. In 1307 he teamed up with Pope Clement V and had the French grandmasters of the Order arrested on charges of Satanism and sacrilege. He would also have hundreds of Templar knights arrested.The Pope would later claim that he believed the Knights Templars accusations unsubstantiated, however he would still have the order suppressed in 1311 where he had the Templars’ properties turned over to the Knight’s Hospitaller, and then many of the Knights Templars were burned at the stake in 1314. The Knights Hospitaller took on similar roles as the Knights Templars by defending castles and serving as major pawns in the army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The Knights Hospitaller’s would become the Knights Templars rival in importance and prestige, however, they continued to pour a substantial part of its resources to its original charitable doings. The Knights Hospitallers did not face the same fate as the Knights Templar and were the only Order to survive and would do so until 1929.
The Decline of Knighthood & Chivalry
For almost 500 years the knight was a dominant force in war and society, his culture permeating almost every part of the medieval world. By 1600 this was no so and the dominance of the knight had vanished. This can be attributed to two causes, the distorting of the distinction between the knight and the genry, and the increased separation of the idea of nobility from military service. Men that were not dubbed knights had always served in war, and in the latter half of the 14th century the distinction between squire and knight would disappear and they would both be referred to as “man-at-arms.” In England, from King Edward III and on called upon only men-at-arms and archers, all other distinctions vanished. This can be attributed to the amplified intensity of warfare throughout Europe and the need for manpower allowed a great number of squires to play a important role in war. With King Edward III’s success he awarded these men financial rewards, in particular land which brought them to the same level as knights with estate. During the 15thcentury warfare was changing, the campaigns being waged were lasting longer and the men at arms were no longer being hired for short periods of time. The campaigns began to become all about seizing and holding territory, this caused the increase in servitude required from the military which made the gentry less inclined to participate. This led to a more professionalized army made up of men spending a majority of their time serving in garrisons.
It was developments in the 16th century that would ensure the demise of the fully armored man-at-arms due to the increase in the number of infantry in armies. The Swiss were actually one of the reasons the knight and man-at-arms disappeared in battle, the Swiss were skilled in the use of pike, halberd, and firepower which included crossbows and handguns. The Swiss would become the model for the infrastructure of armies in the 16th century. The battlefield was now made up of large blobs of pike men ranging from 3,000 to 4,000 men all clashing together. The last item to really finish off the knight was gunpowder. During the middle of the 15th century gunpowder artillery shortened the length of sieges from months to days, making the old-fashioned castle obsolete. New fortresses were raised which again lengthened sieges in the 16th century, but these were different and armored knights were not needed to capture these fortresses. Armor was unable to protect from the invention of the handgun and became obsolete, the only time it was used was in tournaments, but these were artistic, impractical pieces of armor. The symbolic and ceremonial devices that encompassed chivalry became more secular from war during the late 14th and 15th centuries. The famous tournaments, the proving grounds for knights were no longer places for knights to train for battle. The joust and melee became outdates pieces of military strategy. The heralds became less influential and important due to the growing size of armies; it was much more needed to show a collective union with national symbols being used instead of individual coat of arms.
Because the definition of chivalry is up to interpretation, there are many different views on when the notion of chivalry began to decline. If one looks at chivalry through a military aspect which was central to chivalry’s existence, one would look at chivalry as a set of benevolent values regulating war based on the self-preservation among knights. Taking this view it can be seen that chivalry actually began to decline in the 1340s, many of which consider chivalry’s heyday. This is due to an engagement between King Edward III and King Philip VI during the Hundred Years War, where King Philip VI believed it would be better strategy to proclaim it illegal to take prisoners; he did this because he wanted his men to focus on the battle and not securing prisoners for ransom. King Edward III in return signaled it would be illegal to take prisoners, and so both sides slaughtered every person they took. Chivalry can be seen as on decline even before this, in the civil war between Henry III and Simon of Montfort during the 1260s, many brutalities occurred. Many notable knights lost their lives at an encounter at Evesham in 1265 where Simon of Montfort was killed and his body was mutilated with his hands, feet, and head cut off, and his testicles were hung on his nose and stuffed into his mouth. The amount killed at this battle was unprecedented, the historian Richard of Durham believed 10,000 were killed. In comparison, 48 years earlier at the battle of Lincoln in which William Marshal was present; only three men of importance were killed.
In the bloodiest battle of English history at Towton on Palm Sunday of 1461, heralds claim that 20,000 to 28,000 men perished. This is due similar to the engagement between King Edward III and King Philip VI stated earlier, at Towton, the newly appointed King Edward IV ordered his men to take no prisoner, and so the Lancastrians in turn issued the same order, and brutality followed. Many battles that followed would have the same fate. This warfare in the late medieval period can be attributed to a new way of thinking; those who were against the king were considered rebels, and would be treated as so. During the War of Roses, brutality can be attributed to the notion of revenge, where men believed it necessary to uphold family honor and obtain revenge on their fallen fathers and brothers. Philip de Commines observed this happening, “the lords in Egnland killed their enemies; then later the children of their victims gained their revenge when times changed and favoured them and they killed the others”.
Why would chivalrous knights follow such orders? Stated earlier, armies were becoming nationalized, where a government would have a standing paid army, the individual interests of the knights were forced into following national goals and interests. This would kill the knight’s personal honor, if he was caught taking prisoner for ransom his pay would be cut and he may suffer other punishment. In England, it was stated that the gentry had grown tired of the wars and increasingly became disillusioned with going off to war; this would cause the knightly class to shift toward civil aspects of society. The knights could no longer find honor in war, and began to focus on administrative positions and leadership positions of their local communities. The 16th century marked the end of the old concept of the hybrid of knight, courtier, and Christian. The crusading fervor and the ideal Christian knight had vanished and the warrior elite turned into a professional officer class. Thus the idea of an estate of knighthood, with a common goal to uphold justice and protect the weak, was being pared down into the conception of the officer whose goal was the King’s goal.
During the 16th century the notion of a united Christendom vanished with the Reformation, where Christians became more likely to fight with other Christians. This would degrade the concept of a “just war” from religiously motivated and church sanctioned crusades against infidels to recover the Holy Land to wars fought between Christians for completely secular reasons helped in declining the knight’s stature. These ‘just” wars became wars fought with total war mentality, and the use of mercenaries helped fuel it. These mercenaries lived off of spoils of war and ravaged the land and robbed and killed civilians. They didn’t buy into the aristocracy’s idea of ransom because they believed it was just a way for rich knights to deceive them.
Chivalry in the Modern World
The appeal of chivalry had lived on after the traditional armored knight became obsolete. In 1605 Miguel de Cervantes wrote, Don Quixote, a novel that satirized chivalry. It is considered to be the first modern novel that showed that there was a block between the ideal of chivalry and the reality of the modern era. In the 18th century there was a renewed interest in knights and chivalry with the discovery of many medieval manuscripts. This led to writers to use chivalric themes in their writings, and the public bought into it. During the 18th century there was a rise of nationalism, violence in the Napoleonic wars, the introduction of the industrial revolution, all created a desire to return to an era filled with courtesy and courage. An influential knightly work of the nineteenth century was a series of poems called, The Idylls of the King, which retold Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte De’Arthur. Alfred , Lord of Tennyson, the writer of these poems, introduced a new theme, the destruction of Camelot, a perfect kingdom that cannot survive. This could be seen as symbolic of the ideal of chivalry’s inability to survive.
This renewed interest in the romantic genre would suffer during World War I when young men inspired by these renewed concepts of chivalry, went off to war and quickly realized that chivalry could not take place in modern warfare. World War II would set the date when literature would embrace realism, causing knights to have no place in the culture. However, in the 1930s there was a group formed that is now known as the “inklings” who had a interest in medieval literature and the ideals associated with so. These would come out in books, still famous till this day, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. These books dealt with knights and swords, stressed the significance of chivalry, and in Lewis’s case, Christianity. These two authors would give birth to the Fantasy genre, where medievalism and chivalry flourished even more. George R. R. Martin’s series of books, Game of Thrones, came out in 1996, and now even has a series on HBO.
There would also be an interest in knights and chivalry through film. Filmmakers aspire to ensure that their characters embody the qualities of chivalry, honor, loyalty, skill, courage, honesty, and courtliness. They don’t want to have brutish warriors as their main characters so that the audience will relate these chivalric ideals to the modern world. The comedy, Monty Python and the Holy Grail was actually inspired by Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte De’Arthur. This movie exaggerates the ideals of chivalry, for example in one scene, Sir Lancelot runs around just slaughtering everyone, in order to save a damsel in distress. The list of television shows, and films goes on, Star Wars, is influenced from the medieval knight. George Lucas even uses the term knight, in his Jedi Knights, whom are fighters of good who honor a chivalric code. The influence from medieval knighthood to Star Wars in immense, in Star Wars, children go through a similar process that children in medieval England went through. The Jedi Knights would begin training at a Jedi Temple and upon their graduation would become Padawans who would serve under a Jedi, similar to a squire serving under a knight. There are many other characters in other films that are influenced by medieval knights, such as Batman: The Dark Knight, Babylon 5, Knight Rider, etc.
War games have been created to try and imitate the valor and chivalry of the medieval age. There is a variety of war games: chess, board games, roleplaying games, and video games. Dungeons and Dragons was a phenomenon during the 1970s and 1980s, where people would pick characters to role-play and would enter into a imaginative world ran by a Dungeon Master. The computer has allowed many people to get their fill of chivalry and knights. With the genre of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games (MMORPG), people pick a character and embark on quests with friends and strangers online in an attempt to level their character. Games like World of Warcraft, have 11 million online players, these players have to make decisions on morality. This immense following shows that there is still indeed an interest in chivalry.
Many people want more than just computer games, and this gave rise to medieval reenactments. Medieval Times is a famous themed dinner, w here patrons go to eat like they are in the medieval ages, and watch jousts. There is also the advent of the Renaissance Fairs where jousts also occur, although at these it is between professional jousters, and not actors. There are clubs devoted to being real knights, often ran by history buffs, the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) is probably the biggest of these with thirty thousand members. In the SCA the members take on the role of a character, nd pick a name that has to be approved by the organizations heraldry expert. They then have to attend all events in medieval clothing,
Conclusion
Chivalry has had a profound impact on Medieval England’s culture through literature, religion and lifestyle. The term chivalry is one that cannot be defined, as it is a lifestyle, not a obvious code. Chivalry stressed the qualities of courage, loyalty, strength, skill, and military expertise. Chivalry had a wide array of influences, religion, literature, people of history such as William Marshal, all of which chivalry in turn influenced back. Religion cemented the knight’s place in history by declaring the Crusades, and gave the knights of the time, a way to fight a “just” war. Literature gave knights characters to try and live up to, it gave them role-models. Writings like, The Song of Roland and Le Morte De’Arthur transformed the knights image from a brute to a role model, or a celebrity. Knights created their own culture; they created a systematic method of which to obtain knighthood. They established ceremonies for dubbing of knights, and had several off shoots created to serve them, such as the heralds. The knights established places for them to practice and display their skills, by making tournaments.
Tournaments were crucial in the development, promotion, and sustaining of the culture and the performance of chivalry. Chivalry although romanticized in literature and tournaments was a martial ideal. It was a contradictory code in this area, where during war there were huge horrors being committed by so-called chivalrous knights. William Marshal himself participated in cheap tricks. The concept of chivalry helped moderate war; however, it was mainly between the aristocracy where they had a common respect for each other. The Crusades were another tool in cementing the chivalrous knight in history. Richard the Lionheart would become one of the most famous English knights ever, and helped establish the role model of chivalry. Knightly orders were created during the Crusades, and had two influential orders, the Knights Templars and the Knights Hospitallers.
The decline of chivalry and knights can be attributed to many factors. New advents in military tactics, new fortresses, professional armies and the invention of gunpowder all led to the demise of the traditional armored knight. The knight and chivalry would be revived in the 18th century with new romances being written, like the poems, The Idylls of the King. Chivalry would have an important role as well in the 20th and 21st century in film and literature. Through all of this research and information, one will find that chivalry did indeed have a profound impact upon medieval culture, as well as present day culture, it never died. Chivalry was and is more than just being polite towards women, it is a way of life that encompasses all qualities in which knight’s held in high regard, being courteous to women was just one of them. Johan Huizinga was right when he claimed that next to religion, chivalry was the strongest of ideas which filled the minds and hearts of those men of another age.