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Chivalry, or the chivalric code, is a code of conduct associated with the medieval institution of knighthood which developed between 1170 and 1220.
According to the British Medieval historian, David Crouch, the historical debate on chivalry is an ancient one.[1] The late medieval code of chivalry had arisen from the idealisation of the early medieval synthesis of Germanic and Roman martial traditions — involving military bravery, individual training, and service to others — especially in Francia, among horse soldiers in Charlemagne's cavalry,[2][3] the term chivalry deriving from the Old French term chevalerie "horse soldiery"[4] Gautier states that knighthood emerged from the Teutonic forests and was nurtured into civilization and chivalry by the Catholic Church.[5]
Over time its meaning has been refined to emphasise social and moral virtues more generally, and the Code of Chivalry as it stood by the Late Middle Ages was a moral system which combined a warrior ethos, knightly piety and courtly manners, all conspiring to establish a notion of honour and nobility.[6]
The term chivalry in origin has the meaning "horsemanship", formed in Old French in the 11th century from chevalier "horseman; knight", from Medieval Latin caballārius.[7] The French word chevalier originally means "a man of aristocratic standing and probably of noble ancestry, who is capable, if called upon, of equipping himself with a war horse and the arms of heavy cavalryman, and who has been through certain rituals that make him what he is."[8] In English, the term appears from 1292 (note that cavalry is from the Italian form of the same word)[9] The meaning of the term evolved over time because the word chevalier was used differently in the Middle Ages, from the original concrete military meaning "status or fee associated with military follower owning a war horse" or "a group of mounted knights" to the ideal of the Christian warrior ethos propagated in the Romance genre which was becoming popular during the 12th century, and the ideal of courtly love propagated in the contemporary Minnesang and related genres. Thus, chivalry has hierarchical meanings from simply a heavily armed horseman to a code of conduct. The ideas of chivalry originated in three medieval works: the anonymous poem Ordene de Chevalerie that tells the story of how Hugh of Tiberias was captured and released upon his agreement to show Saladin the ritual of Christian knighthood,[10] the Libre del ordre de cavayleria written by Ramon Lull that depicts about knighthood,[11] and Livre de Chevalerie of Geoffroi de Charny that explains the knighthood qualities with the emphasis on prowess.[12] Based on the three treatises, initially chivalry was defined as a way of life in which three essential aspects fused together: the military, the nobility, the religion.[13]
The "code of chivalry" is thus a product of the Late Middle Ages, evolving after the end of the crusades partly from an idealisation of the historical knights fighting in the Holy Land, partly from ideals of courtly love.
Léon Gautier in his La Chevalerie published for the first time in 1883 bemoaned the "invasion of Breton romans" which replaced the pure military ethos of the crusades with Arthurian fiction and courtly adventures. Gautier tries to give a "popular summary" of what he proposes was the "ancient code of chivalry" of the 11th and 12th centuries derived from the military ethos of the crusades which would evolve into the late medieval notion of chivalry. Gautier's Ten Commandments of chivalry are:
According to Crouch, many early writers on medieval chivalry cannot be absolutely trusted as historians, because they sometimes have "polemical purpose which colours their prose."[15] As for Kenelm Henry Digby and Leon Gautier, chivalry was a means to transform their corrupt and secular worlds.[16] Gautier also emphasized that chivalry originated from the Teutonic forests and brought up into civilization by the Catholic Church.[17] Charles Mills used chivalry "to demonstrate that the Regency gentleman was the ethical heir of a great moral estate, and to provide an inventory of its treasure."[18] Mills also stated that chivalry was a social, not a military phenomenon, with its key features: generosity, fidelity, liberality, and courtesy.[19]
According to Crouch, prior to codified chivalry there was the uncodified code of noble conduct that focused on the preudomme. This uncodified code is called the noble habitus. Habitus is an idea originally appeared in the work of the French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, which means the environment of behavioral and material expectations generated by all societies and classes.[20] Crouch argues that the habitus on which "the superstructure of chivalry" was built and the preudomme was a part, had been existed long before 1100, while the codified medieval noble conduct only began between 1170 and 1220.[21]
The pre-chivalric noble habitus as discovered by Mills and Gautier are as follows:
The code of chivalry, as it was known at late Medieval age, developed between 1170 and 1220.[32]
Chivalry was developed in the north of France around the mid-12th century but adopted its structure in a European context. New social status, new military techniques, and new literary topics were adhered to a new character known as the knight and his ethos called chivalry.[33] The chivalric ideals are based on those of the early medieval warrior class, and martial exercise and military virtue remains an integral part of chivalry until the end of the medieval period,[34] as the reality on the battlefield changed with the development of Early Modern warfare increasingly restricted to the tournament ground and duelling culture. The joust remained the primary example of knightly display of martial skill throughout the Renaissance (the last Elizabethan Accession Day tilt was held in 1602). The martial skills of the knight carried over to the practice of the hunt, and hunting expertise became an important aspect of courtly life in the later medieval period (c.f. terms of venery). Related to chivalry was the practice of heraldry and its elaborate rules of displaying coats of arms as it emerged in the High Middle Ages.
Christianity and church had a modifying influence on the classical concept of heroism and virtue, nowadays identified with the virtues of chivalry.[35][36] The Peace and Truce of God in the 10th century was one such example, with limits placed on knights to protect and honour the weaker members of society and also help the church maintain peace. At the same time the church became more tolerant of war in the defense of faith, espousing theories of the just war; and liturgies were introduced which blessed a knight's sword, and a bath of chivalric purification. In the story of the Grail romances and Chevalier au Cygne, it was the confidence of the Christian knighthood that its way of life was to please God, and chivalry was an order of God.[37] Thus, chivalry as a Christian vocation was a result of marriage between Teutonic heroic values with the militant tradition of Old Testament.[38]
The first noted support for chivalric vocation, or the establishment of knightly class to ensure the sanctity and legitimacy of Christianity was written in 930 by Odo, abbot of Cluny in the Vita of St. Gerald of Aurillac, which argued that the sanctity of Christ and Christian doctrine can be demonstrated through the legitimate unsheathing of the “sword against the enemy”.[39] In the 11th century the concept of a "knight of Christ" (miles Christi) gained currency in France, Spain and Italy.[34] These concepts of "religious chivalry" were further elaborated in the era of the Crusades, with the Crusades themselves often being seen as a chivalrous enterprise.[34] Their ideas of chivalry were also further influenced by Saladin, who was viewed as a chivalrous knight by medieval Christian writers. The military orders of the crusades which developed in this period came to be seen as the earliest flowering of chivalry,[40] although it remains unclear to what extent the notable knights of this period, Saladin, Godfrey of Bouillon, William Marshal or Bertrand du Guesclin, actually did set new standards of knightly behaviour, or to what extent they merely behaved according to existing models of conduct which came in retrospect to be interpreted along the lines of the "chivalry" ideal of the Late Middle Ages.[34] Nevertheless, chivalry and crusades were not the same thing. While the crusading ideology had largely influenced the ethic of chivalry during its formative times, chivalry itself was related to a whole range of martial activities and aristocratic values which had no necessary linkage with crusading.[41]
From the 12th century onward chivalry came to be understood as a moral, religious and social code of knightly conduct. The particulars of the code varied, but codes would emphasise the virtues of courage, honour, and service. Chivalry also came to refer to an idealisation of the life and manners of the knight at home in his castle and with his court.
Medieval courtly literature glorifies the valour, tactics and ideals of ancient Romans.[34] For example the ancient hand-book of warfare written by Vegetius called De Re Militari was translated into French in the 13th century as L'art de chevalerie by Jean de Meun. Later writers also drew from Vegetius such as Honore Bonet who wrote the 14th century L'arbes des batailles, which discussed the morals and laws of war. In the 15th century Christine de Pizan combined themes from Vegetius, Bonet and Frontinus in Livre des faits d'armes et de chevalerie.
In the later Middle Ages, wealthy merchants strove to adopt chivalric attitudes - the sons of the bourgeoisie were educated at aristocratic courts where they were trained in the manners of the knightly class.[34] This was a democratisation of chivalry, leading to a new genre called the courtesy book, which were guides to the behaviour of "gentlemen". Thus, the post-medieval gentlemanly code of the value of a man's honor, respect for women, and a concern for those less fortunate, is directly derived from earlier ideals of chivalry and historical forces which created it.[34]
The medieval development of chivalry, with the concept of the honour of a lady and the ensuing knightly devotion to it, not only derived from the thinking about the Virgin Mary, but also contributed to it.[42] The medieval veneration of the Virgin Mary was contrasted by the fact that ordinary women, especially those outside aristocratic circles, were looked down upon. Although women were at times viewed as the source of evil, it was Mary who as mediator to God was a source of refuge for man. The development of medieval Mariology and the changing attitudes towards women paralleled each other and can best be understood in a common context.[43]
When examining medieval literature, chivalry can be classified into three basic but overlapping areas:
These three areas obviously overlap quite frequently in chivalry, and are often indistinguishable.
Different weight given to different areas produced different strands of chivalry:
Chivalry underwent a revival and elaboration of chivalric ceremonial and rules of etiquette in the 14th century that was examined by Johan Huizinga, in The Waning of the Middle Ages (1919, 1924), in which he dedicates a full chapter to "The idea of chivalry". In contrasting the literary standards of chivalry with the actual warfare of the age, the historian finds the imitation of an ideal past illusory; in an aristocratic culture such as Burgundy and France at the close of the Middle Ages, "to be representative of true culture means to produce by conduct, by customs, by manners, by costume, by deportment, the illusion of a heroic being, full of dignity and honour, of wisdom, and, at all events, of courtesy. ...The dream of past perfection ennobles life and its forms, fills them with beauty and fashions them anew as forms of art".[44]
Chivalry was dynamic and it transformed and adjusted in response to local situation. Probably it was how it came to its demise. There were many chivalric groups in England as imagined by Sir Thomas Malory when he wrote Le Morte Darthur in the late 15th century,[45] perhaps each group created each chivalric ideology. And Malory's perspective reflects the condition of 15th-century chivalry.[46] When Le Morte Darthur was printed, William Caxton urged knights to read the romance with an expectation that reading about chivalry could unite a community of knights already divided by the Wars of the Roses.[47]
During the early Tudor rule in England, the code of chivalry was still alive. Some knights still fought for honor and for the good, to protect women and the poor while some others ignored the ethos. There were fewer knights engaged in active warfare because battlefields during this century were generally the area of professional infantrymen, with less opportunity for knights to show chivalry.[48] It was the beginning of the demise of the knight. The rank of knight never faded, but it was Queen Elizabeth I who ended the tradition that any knight could create another and made it exclusively the preserve of the monarch.[49] Christopher Wilkins contends that Sir Edward Woodville, who rode from battle to battle across Europe and died in 1488 in Brittany, was the last knight errant who witnessed the fall of the Age of Chivalry and the rise of modern European welfare. When the Middle Ages were over, the code of chivalry was gone.[50]
Chivalry! – why, maiden, she is the nurse of pure and high affection – the stay of the oppressed, the redresser of grievances, the curb of the power of the tyrant – Nobility were but an empty name without her, and liberty finds the best protection in her lance and her sword. —Walter Scott, Ivanhoe (1820)
The chivalric ideal persisted into the early modern and modern period. The custom of foundation of chivalric orders by Europe's monarchs and high nobility peaked in the late medieval period, but it persisted during the Renaissance and well into the Baroque and early modern period, with e.g. the Tuscan Order of Saint Stephen (1561), the French Order of Saint Louis (1693) or the British Order of St. Patrick (1783), and numerous dynastic orders of knighthood remain active in countries that retain a tradition of monarchy.
At the same time, with the change of courtly ideas during the Baroque period, the ideals of chivalry began to be seen as dated, or "medieval". Don Quixote, published in 1605, parodied the medieval chivalric novel or romance by ridiculing the stubborn adherence to the chivalric code in the face of the then-modern world as anachronistic, giving rise to the term Quixotism. Conversely, Romanticism refers to the attempt to revive such "medieval" ideals or aesthetics in the late 18th and early 19th century.
The behavioural code of military officers down to the Napoleonic era, the American Civil War (especially as idealised in the "Lost Cause" movement) and to some extent even to World War I was still strongly modelled on the historical ideals, resulting in a pronounced duelling culture, which in some parts of Europe also held sway over the civilian life of the upper classes. With the decline of the Ottoman Empire, however, the military threat from the "infidel" disappeared; the Wars of Religion in Europe spanned much of the early modern period and consisted of infighting between factions of various Christian denominations, this process of confessionalization ultimately giving rise to a new military ethos based in nationalism rather than "defending the faith against the infidel".
From the Early Modern period, the term gallantry (from galant, the Baroque ideal of refined elegance) rather than chivalry became used for the proper behaviour of upper class men towards upper class women. In the 19th century, there were attempts to revive chivalry for the purposes of the gentleman of that time. Kenelm Henry Digby wrote his The Broad-Stone of Honour for this purpose, offering the definition: 'Chivalry is only a name for that general spirit or state of mind which disposes men to heroic actions, and keeps them conversant with all that is beautiful and sublime in the intellectual and moral world'.
The pronouncedly masculine virtues of chivalry came under attack on the parts of the upper-class suffragettes campaigning for gender equality in the early 20th century,[51] and with the decline of the military ideals of duelling culture and of European aristocracies in general following the catastrophe of World War I, the ideals of chivalry became widely seen as outmoded by the mid-20th century. As a material reflection of this process, the dress sword lost its position as an indispensable part of a gentleman's wardrobe, a development described as an "archaeological terminus" by Ewart Oakeshott, as it concluded the long period during which the sword had been a visible attribute of the free man, beginning as early as three millennia ago with the Bronze Age sword.[52]
During the 20th century, the chivalrous ideal of protecting women came to be seen as a trope of melodrama ("damsel in distress"). The term chivalry retains a certain currency in sociology, in reference to the general tendency of men, and of society in general, to lend more attention offering protection from harm to women than to men, or in noting gender gaps in life expectancy, health, etc., also expressed in media bias giving significantly more attention to female than to male victims (see also missing white woman syndrome).[53]
According to William Manchester, General Douglas McArthur was a chivalric warrior who fought a war with the intention to conquer the enemy, completely eliminating their ability to strike back, then treated them with the understanding and kindness due their honor and courage. One prominent model of his chivalrous conduct was in World War II and his treatment of the Japanese at the end of the war. McArthur's model provides a way to win a war with as few casualties as possible and how to get the respect of former enemy after the occupation of their homeland.[54] On May 12, 1962, McArthur gave a famous speech in front of the cadets of United States Military Academy at West Point by referring to a great moral code, the code of conduct and chivalry, when emphasizing duty, honor, and country.[55]
Historical civalry
Cross-cultural comparison
Sociology
Byzantine Empire, Ottoman Empire, Middle Ages, East–West Schism, Crusader states
Armenia, Damascus, Ayyubid dynasty, Syria, Egypt
United Kingdom, Angles, Cornwall, Isle of Man, English language
Battle of Carabobo
J. R. R. Tolkien, Chivalry, Courtly love, Eve, Geoffrey Chaucer
Belgium, United Kingdom, Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, Crusades
Miguel de Cervantes, Chivalry, Burlesque, Mark Twain, Rocinante
Chrétien de Troyes, Love, C. S. Lewis, Arabic literature, Andreas Capellanus
Ethics, Aesthetics, Epistemology, Justice, Metaphysics