Cultured Knights

 There are two main stereotypes of medieval knights, one that they were crude and violent, the other that they were refined, with a delicate sensibility to the needs of the weak and of women.  Sometimes these two stereotypes are combined, portraying crude knights who hypocritically wanted to portray themselves as chivalrous and refined.

All these versions take as their starting assumption that one could not be both a violent fighter and a cultured person at the same time.  However, there is plenty of evidence that knights, for all their flaws and sinful behavior (including pride and avarice, as depicted below in a twelfth-century carving), were quite cultured in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Perhaps we should not be surprised that military training and sometimes violent behavior (even vicariously as in playing video games) can go together with education and concern for social issues.  Military veterans are found in positions of responsibility throughout our society, many vets go from the military to college, and even thoughtful, caring individuals may occasionally enjoy grabbing the game controller and shooting up the space invaders from Mars.

Twelfth- and thirteenth-century knights were mostly literate, in that they could read even if not necessarily write—and read Latin at that, at least well enough to look over a charter and make sure it said what they intended it to say.  The Cistercian monk Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux (depicted below), had not originally intended to go into the church, but he received a superb education in both reading and writing as a day student at a church school in Châtillon, and he was considered one of the great Latin stylists of the twelfth century.

Oaths that knights were expected to take, from the early eleventh century on, stressed protection of the weak, especially churchmen and the poor.  Anyone living at or visiting court (that is, either in the royal household or in the household of a great lord) was expected to be able to display courtly behavior, which stressed good manners, self-control, and proper dress.  By the second half of the twelfth century, the term chevalerie, which had originally just meant good battlefield skills for a mounted warrior, had come to include courtliness (courtoisie).

A late twelfth-century or thirteenth-century knight was also supposed to know how to approach women politely and courteously, even though they had not been defined as part of "the weak" back in the eleventh century.  Playing an instrument, dancing smoothly, composing elegant love-letters were all part of "courting" a lady (note that word again).  Someone who did not wear well-styled clothing or did not keep himself scrupulously clean and sweet-smelling was rejected by the ladies in the romances of the time.

A knight's house was also supposed to be fairly elegant, with tapestries on the walls and nice tablecloths.  Plates and drinking vessels couldn't have bits of yesterday's meal clinging to them.  When you think about how one was supposed to do all this without modern conveniences (for starters, running hot water) you'll realize that this was something knights had to work at deliberately.

And at the same time of course being a knight involved a whole lot of military training, to be able to fight on horseback with lance or sword (and not fall off or injure the horse), to be able to ride long distances and take proper care of one's mount.  Although there were few serious wars in the twelfth century (we aren't up to the Hundred Years' War yet), there were always plenty of local battles and skirmishes, and tournaments (mock battles) could turn violent.  Knights, full of touchy pride, were always turning on their friends in the epics in response to perceived insults.

In spite of all of this violence, the knights themselves, with serious nudges from the church and from the writers of epics and romances, actually wanted to be cultured.  They saw overcoming evil doers and helping the weak as worthy goals.  They did not merely try to fake a façade of refinement.  They wanted to be refined, even if most of the time they didn't measure up.  They would have thought the Man of La Mancha song "The Impossible Dream" was a swell song.

A good book on cultured knights in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is by Martin Aurell, The Lettered Knight (Central European University Press, 2017).

© C. Dale Brittain 2014

For more on knights and other aspects of medieval history, see my book Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other platforms, in ebook or paperback.