![]() The Chivalrous Knight Appears in Romantic Fiction ![]() “You’ve got to find some way to get them to get along.”Ī maiden leads a knight in a suit of armor to a castle. ![]() “You’ve got all these people who are very prone to violence, heavily armed,” says Kelly Gibson, a medieval historian at the University of Dallas and editor of Vengeance in Medieval Europe. The most common values found in rules that commanders created for knights revolved around the practical needs of a military force: bravery in battle and loyalty to one’s lord and companions. There was never a firm consensus on what it meant to be a good knight. “What develops as you get into the late 11th, 12th century is a sense that knights have to have a professional code if they’re going to be respected and respectable.” “In the early Middle Ages, church councils were praying to be delivered from knights,” Wollock says. These warriors were commanded by warlords and rewarded with land, or with license to plunder the villages where they did battle, looting, raping and burning as they went. READ MORE: Weapons of the Middle Ages Knights Were Heavily Armed and Prone to Violence “He’s a hired thug,” says Jennifer Goodman Wollock, a professor of medieval studies at Texas A&M University who has written two books about chivalry. In the middle of the 11th century, the knight was not a particularly honorable figure. The word chivalry itself comes from the Medieval Latin caballarius, meaning horseman. The development of chivalry went hand-in-hand with the rise of knights-heavily armored, mounted warriors from elite backgrounds-starting around the time of the Norman conquest of England in 1066. While these rules sometimes dictated generous treatment of the less-fortunate and less-powerful, they were focused mainly on protecting the interests of elites. But during the Middle Ages, the code was established for much grittier reasons.Īt a time of routine military violence with massive civilian casualties, chivalry was an effort to set ground rules for knightly behavior. Its primary goal is to regulate violence in French society.In the 21st century, the word chivalry evokes a kind of old-fashioned male respect for women. Chivalry was derived from the French word chevalier which meant mounted heavy cavalry. One cannot totally say it was good or bad. ![]() Knights Code of Chivalry Summary Was chivalry good or bad for medieval society? This was a ceremony where the sacraments and relics were put into the hilt of his sword, tying his duty to God, which was the central notion of chivalry. Those who underwent knighthood also underwent a process of purification. The idea of chivalry was conceived alongside the crusades in the dark ages and its goal was to diminish the brutality of these crusades as well as to make men loyal to the Christian faith. The foundation of chivalry was Christianity as it was created by the church, for the church, and through the church. The primary goal of knighthood was to uphold the dignity of the Church.
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