Have we talked about "honor" yet?

Have a look here.

More on love, beauty and courtliness -- UPDATED

From James A. Schultz's 2006 book, Courtly Love, the Love of Courtliness, and the History of Sexuality, page 80-1:

In what follows, I will show that nobility is an attribute of bodies, that it is visible, and that visible nobility provokes love.…

The heroes and heroines Middle High German romance can hide their individual identity, but it is impossible for them to hide their noble identity. Their bodies give them away...

When Oringles comes across Enite,... [he] has no idea who she is. This much, however, he can tell "she is in truth a noble woman: that is proved by her most beautiful body."...

Just as the beauty of bodies incites love, so does the nobility of bodies, of which their beauty is an unmistakable index. Meinloh is devoted to a woman he has not even spoken with because "my eyes saw the absolute truth: she is noble and beautiful."

Page 91:

Courtly lovers do not respond to a sexy body or to an engaging personality or to a mere display of wealth. They fall in love with an ideal of courtly nobility. This ideal presents itself as a single image that combines a noble body, courtly virtue, splendid clothing, and the visible mastery of courtly skills. When someone susceptible to these qualities sees them realized in the highest form, that person is taken aback, is captivated, and falls in love.

Pictures from a recent joust in San Diego

The Tournament of the Phoenix is an annual event in California; the most recent was last weekend.  Julie Buchta-Davis took some excellent pictures and posted them on Facebook.  Here's the link, for those who have access.

Illustrations of knighting ceremonies for the class of October 26

Some easy links:

Thirteenth century.

Fourteenth century.

Fifteenth century.

Jousting in San Diego

A video on training and equipment, and an article on making armor.

Model NATO

Prof Gendron writes:

I'm in the process again of organising this years' Nipissing University student Model NATO team.  As part of the team, a group of 5 or 6 Nipissing students take part in a conference in Ottawa early in 2011 during which they will be part of a simulated NATO meeting.  The conference includes teams from other universities across Ontario and sometimes outside the province and is a great opportunity for students with an interest in international diplomacy/debate/crisis management and the like to get involved in a very enjoyable conference and to represent NipU outside the university, while interacting with their peers from other universities.

 

An organisational meeting for the 2010-11 Model NATO team is being held tomorrow, Oct 6 from 11-11:30 in room H304.

 

Weird Medieval History Contest

At Got Medieval?

Canadian residents can't actually win, but it might be fun for honorable mention.

Watch out for that word!

I have been looking over the short papers handed in last Tuesday about what knights did.  One quite reasonable  piece caught my attention by its assumption in several places that we all know what chivalry means. One point that was made more than once is that the actual knights depicted in our readings did not measure up to some standard of chivalry that was not specified.

Watch out for this trap! We have already seen, and will see repeatedly in times to come, that "chivalry" is a tricky word that means different things to different people, even back in the Middle Ages. If you are going to praise or criticize some person or group on the basis of their "chivalry," you better be clear what you mean by that word and where you are deriving that meaning from.

If you are interested in different concepts of chivalry, I suggest that you go to Scott Ferrell's Chivalry Ttoday website and listen to some of the podcasts there. They are free, interesting, and sometimes even brilliant. Now that you  have had a good look at Charny, you might want to listen to Richard Kaeuper or even me.

What Knights Did #1

In “A Knight’s Own Book of Chivalry,” Geoffroi Charny depicts the joust, tournaments, and war as the main definable events that knights partook in.1 Furthermore, with success in these duties, a knight would reveal his bravery, strength, and determination, which would in turn, depict his honor. Coinciding with these duties was the duty for knights to live and act conforming to the will of God.2 Additionally, a knight’s overall duty was to protect and defend the honor of al ladies, to eventually win the love of one lady.3

Since Charny was experienced and characterized knighthood through the joust, tourneys, and war, it is obvious that he would consider the questions that he felt are most important and debatable on these topics. Moreover, with a reputation of one of the most brave and chivalrous of all knights4 and as a member of the Order of the Star, it is understood that Charny had a high level of experience as a knight and thus, would have the expertise and knowledge to ask these questions revolving around the life of knights.

Anna Comnena's article reveals Charny's desire to "return to the basics, to emphasize the core values of his profession"5 where a knight's bravery had overpowered his ego to the extent that he sat in the emperor's throne and talked in a barbaric style.6

Because jousting and tournaments were important and occurred often in Charny’s time, many people (not only the knights) would likely encounter situations where these questions would need to be considered and debated upon. For example, princes, squires, judges, and even common folk may have witnessed an event where the solution to the outcome is debatable and an outside opinion is needed to come to a less biased final decision or agreement.

Many of the questions concerning war are practical of Charny to ask since war was a significant aspect of Medieval life, and affected many members of society. These questions mirror the public international “Laws of War” of today’s society, which regulate engaging in war and wartime conduct. Charny’s questions open thought and discussion about war in of the early times where such regulations would not have been established.

¹ Geoffroi de Charny, A Knight’s Own Book of Chivalry, (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 24.

² Ibid., 35.

³ Ibid., 52-3.

⁴ Peter Ainsworth, “The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny: Book Review,” Medium Aevum 69 (2000): 323. EBSCOhost, http://web.ebscohost.com.

5 Geoffroi de Charny, 22.

5 James Harvey Robinson, ed., Readings in European History: Vol. I: (Boston: Ginn and co., 1904), pp. 320-321.

Bibliography

Ainsworth, Peter. “The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny: Book Review,” Medium Aevum 69 (2000): 323. EBSCOhost, http://web.ebscohost.com.

Charny, Geoffroi de. A Knight’s Own Book of Chivalry. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.

Robinson, James Harvey, ed. Readings in European History: Vol. I. Boston: Ginn and co., 1904.

My interview on Chivalry Today

Some years back, I too had the privilege of being interviewed by the intelligent Scott Farrell.  We covered a lot of ground and I was able to sum up what I thought I knew at the time.  Here is the interview.

Markward the ministerialis, another kind of knight

Today in our class we were talking about terminology, and I made the point that some of the terms associated with military service in the middle ages migrated upwards.  A word started by designating a person or a position that was fairly humble, and eventually the name or term came to mean something pretty important.  The chevalier was somebody on horseback originally, and eventually chevalier indicated a nobleman who supposedly had many courtly virtues.  Originally the knight in English usage was a servant boy, but after centuries of linguistic struggle the knight had evolved into something very like the noble chevalier.  The squire carried around someone else’s shield, until one day he was promoted to respectable land owner and justice of the peace.

And after class   I thought of another example of this, the use in Germany and perhaps other parts of the mediaeval empire of the term “ministerialis, ” another word meaning servant or henchmen, to mean...something like chevalier.  There was another German term, derived from local roots and not from Latin, that also meant chevalier.  It was the word Ritter, which like the French word originally meant “rider.” Usually, however, the Ritter claimed noble blood and independence, while the ministerialis came from a family which had a long association with a much more important one.  Some people consider them to be unfree, though I have to wonder about the label, given the career of the most famous ministerialis, Markward of Anweiler, whose picture heads up this post.  He was the trusted right hand man of the German Emperor Henry VI and a dangerous enemy of Pope Innocent III.  He was almost as good as a king, and inconvenient enough to be called “another Saladin.” Some servant!

For a little more about Markward, see an old post of mine. 

Richard Kaeuper: Chivalry Today and yesterday

Just  to get your mouth set, there's an interview with Richard Kaeuper, a leading scholar on chivalry.