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.

Tournaments

Tournaments, mock battles, first appeared at the end of the eleventh century/beginning of the twelfth.  Because by that time it was fairly well understood (at least in the abstract) that Christians should not kill Christians (as discussed in a previous post), the knights who had been trained their whole lives as warriors wanted a chance to demonstrate their skill.  Church leaders would have preferred them to go off on Crusade, but the knights did not necessarily want to go off on a long and dangerous trip, where they would likely come home broke if they came home at all.

Of course, one could be killed in a tournament, even though that was not the purpose.  The swords did not have edges, but they still made fine blunt instruments.  And falling from a galloping horse is an excellent way to break one's neck.  Because the church believed that a tournament brought out all of the worst vices--pride and anger as well as potentially manslaughter--whole tournaments might be put under excommunication.  Someone killed in a tournament was not supposed to be buried in the churchyard but rather at the crossroads with a stake through his heart, the same as a suicide.

Twelfth-century knights were not deterred nor inspired to go on Crusade instead.  If one went on Crusade, one was either trying to find salvation or else to join in the general excitement when a duke announced he was off to Jerusalem.

It was possible for an excellent tournament fighter to make his living on the circuit.  William Marshall, who was companion to one of the sons of Henry II of England and later regent of England after the death of King John, got his start fighting in tournaments.  Losers forfeited their horse and armor to the winner, who generally allowed the loser to buy them back.

Although the modern view of tournaments is two knights with long lances galloping at each other in a ritualistic way, in practice twelfth-century tournaments could be a lot more chaotic.  As well as jousts, the face-offs between two knights, there was the mêlée, a free-for-all that could take off cross-country and go on all day.  At one point the knights from Flanders were late for a tournament and announced that they would just sit and watch.  However, as the mêlée was winding down, and all the other knights were exhausted, the Flemish knights donned their armor, mounted up, and quickly captured everyone in sight.  This was universally agreed to be a fine trick.

At many big tournaments, there would be a sort of pre-tournament the night before, to weed out the weaker fighters.  This "bohort" was typically fought in regular clothes, not armor, and involved poking more than striking.  It was a sign of ostentatious wealth to wear very fine clothing to the bohort and have them ripped to shreds.

Women did not participate directly in tournaments.  But they certainly were spectators, cheering on their favorites, often determining who was the winner, the one who had fought the best.  The knights of course wanted to impress the ladies (adding lust to the list of vices a tournament could excite).

With the invention of gunpowder, the fighting skills honed in tournaments no longer played much of a role in real battles.  Nonetheless, tournaments continued to be popular.  They could become extremely elaborate, requiring knights to prove noble ancestry several generations back in order to take part.  As armor became heavier and heavier and the warhorses thus larger, the knights had to be winched up into the saddle and strapped in place.  The late medieval church decided there was no problem with tournaments, even though people were still killed in them--including the heir to the French throne in the sixteenth century.

© C. Dale Brittain 2015