The abstract noun ‘chivalry’ (chevalerie) is derived from the contemporary term used for a medieval mounted warrior or knight, chevalier. Its precise meaning remains elusive: chivalry, as it evolved from the 11th c., meant different things at different times in different places. Ideal forms of chivalry are described in a rich vernacular literature, of which the
Later medieval centuries not only added further influential literary models for chivalric imitation (the Arthurian and Alexander romance-cycles rivalled that of Charlemagne and his paladins in popularity), but also provided exemplars from life. The Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal (c.1225-30), accounts of other famous soldiers like Bertrand du Guesclin (d. 1380) or Maréchal Boucicaut (d. 1421), or the panorama of western European knighthood in the 14th c. furnished by Froissart's Chroniques and other chivalric historians were widely circulated. In the 15th c. the court of the dukes of Burgundy was especially influential in promoting all forms of chivalric endeavour, with knights engaging in quests, pas d'armes, and tournaments, when not employed in real warfare, but their enthusiasm was still widely shared by most of the nobility of Europe. After 1325 most states of any importance in the West saw the creation of exclusive secular Orders of Chivalry like the Band of Castile (1330), the Garter in England (1347-8), or the Golden Fleece of Burgundy (1430) under the close control of their sovereigns, and where the inspiration of the Arthurian Round Table is sometimes directly obvious.
Medieval authors also continuously drew on biblical or classical sources of inspiration to provide exemplars worthy of imitation. From an early stage in chivalric writing the topos of a lost Golden Age and criticism of modern knights for failure to live up to standards set by their ancestors became common; it occurs already in Étienne de Fougères's Livre des manières (c.1170). Many of these themes came happily together at the beginning of the 14th c. in Jacques de Longuyon's Vœux du paon [see Alexander Romances], in which the cult of the Nine Worthies, archetypal warrior-figures chosen from classical antiquity, the Bible, and medieval history, makes its first literary appearance. Hector, Alexander, and Julius Caesar represented antiquity; Joshua, David, and Judas Maccabeus were the biblical heroes; and Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey de Bouillon exemplified the recent past. The deeds of Du Guesclin led Eustache Deschamps to dub him the tenth preux, whilst in Scotland Robert Bruce was deemed worthy of that honour. An equivalent list of nine preuses, chosen from antiquity, was latterly augmented by the addition of Jeanne d'Arc.
There was also an important technical literature of chivalry with treatises and instructional manuals on knightly behaviour, training, and the art of war. These combined lessons derived from Vegetius' De re militari (translated by Jean de Meun as L'Art de chevalerie) and other Roman authorities like Frontinus, with those taught by recent experience of warfare and contemporary legal theory (itself largely based on the Justinianic Civil Code or, in the case of the concept of the Just War, on St Augustine and Canon lawyers). An anonymous Ordene de chevalerie (c.1250) and Ramon Lull's Libre del ordre de cavalyeria (also quickly translated into French) provide two early examples, whilst Honoré Bouvet's L'Arbre des batailles and Christine de Pizan's Livre des fais d'armes et de chevalerie were two widely circulated late-medieval examples of books explaining the moral dimensions of war and exhorting knights to observe accepted conventions of the ‘laws of war’ which now governed actual fighting. New editions, translations, or adaptations of these key texts on the theory and practice of chivalry had been produced in all major European languages by the 15th c. The vogue was further enhanced by the invention of printing, when chivalric works were amongst the earliest and most popular printed books. Lull's Libre, for example, was Englished by Caxton and three further French editions appeared in the early 16th c. That the images of knighthood they portrayed remained influential is made plain by the career of Bayart, a late example of a chevalier sans reproche.
It is thus against the varied patterns of behaviour attributed to fictitious as well as real figures that the diversity of actions contemporaries recognized as chivalric during the Middle Ages must be measured. Initially the product of a very specific set of historical and social circumstances, a working definition is that chivalry (‘what the horse soldiers did’) was an ethical code in which ‘martial, aristocratic and Christian elements were fused together’ (Keen). Although some features which went into its composition are universal military virtues—bravery, loyalty, and generosity towards companions in arms—the area in which chivalry came to birth and quickly achieved its most durable characteristics is widely agreed to be France. It was particularly in northern France in the 11th and 12th c. that a society dominated by great princes and aristocrats, ably seconded by lesser military figures, a feudal society, was formed. But many other parts of the medieval West also contributed to the shaping or expression of chivalric ideals, whilst the remarkable military successes of western knights from around 1100 in Muslim Spain, Byzantium, the eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East, and the Baltic entailed a wide dissemination of these ideals, which became normative for the European aristocracy for the rest of the Middle Ages and beyond.
The main military development encouraging the rise of chivalry was the use by cavalry troops of the lance as a thrusting weapon rather than as a missile like a spear or javelin. The Normans were pioneers in these tactics; the Bayeux Tapestry (c.1080) catches the changes they entailed at a critical moment. But by the early 12th c. cavalry in most parts of the West had adopted the new weapons and tactics, their spread probably encouraged by the simultaneous development of the tournament, a form of mockwarfare in which knights practised their newly won skills. Success in tournaments, as the career of William the Marshal (Guillaume le Maréchal) admirably showed, might lead to wealth and political power for a landless knight. In the 13th c. several of these international events, like those at Hem in 1278 (‘a marvellous piece of Arthurian theatre’—Keen) or at Chauvency in October 1285 were commemorated in verse, whilst the jousts at Saint-Inglevert (1390) between Anglo-French knights during a lull in the Hundred Years War were celebrated by Froissart.
It was in this context that heraldry also developed: a system of rules governing the adoption of personal and family devices borne by the knighthood as an aid to recognition. Heraldry was an essential adjunct to medieval chivalry, allowing observers to record outstanding or infamous deeds in the lists or on the battlefield. The first known hereditary insignia or coats of arms came into use in England, France, and Spain c.1130-40. Heralds, who are first found at late 12th-c. tournaments, slowly assumed the leading role in their increasingly ritualized organization and as guardians of the complex science of blazon, whose traditional language is still based today on Old French as it was in the late Middle Ages. By then most of Europe was divided into Heraldic Marches, each with its own hierarchy of kings of arms, heralds, and poursuivants. Recognized internationally as enjoying personal immunity, heralds were also frequently employed as messengers for diplomatic missions, besides officiating at every kind of ceremonial or court occasion.
The combination of a social system dominated by a nobility with its own distinctive moral and ethical values based on the code of chivalry proved to be remarkably durable and influential. Other medieval social groups (leading townsmen in the Low Countries, Germany, and Renaissance Italy, for instance) held these values in high esteem. Aspects of chivalry came to affect the content of education beyond the princely courts and noble households where it found its fullest expression. Among chivalry's legacies to the post-medieval world is the concept of the ‘gentleman’, the man of honour, breeding, and social distinction [see Courtoisie; Honnêteté], whilst the ‘laws of war’, to which chivalric warfare gave rise, helped prepare the way for the formulation of international law in more recent centuries.
[Michael Jones]
Bibliography
- G. Duby, The Chivalrous Society, tr. Cynthia Postan (1977)
- M. Keen, Chivalry (1984)
- P. Contamine, War in the Middle Ages (1984)
