Robert W. Jones and Peter Coss (eds.)
A Companion to Chivalry
(The Boydell Press, 2019), 348 pp. $99.00.
The study of medieval chivalry has been a vibrant subfield for generations, and this recent edited collection promises to advance the discussion of chivalry along several fruitful and intriguing paths going forward. A Companion to Chivalry, edited by Robert W. Jones and Peter Coss and published by Boydell & Brewer, brings together fifteen articles and a scholarly introduction from a range of scholarly disciplines that approach chivalry from a variety of angles. The articles are not explicitly sub-divided into thematic parts or groups, though they do follow a somewhat chronological track beginning with chivalry’s origins and ending with notions of modern medievalism. Jones’ introduction focuses on introducing each article, a task that he does admirably.
The volume begins with an article from co-editor Peter Coss entitled “The Origins and Diffusion of Chivalry”. In many ways this serves as a second introduction; an introduction to the history and historiography of chivalry, primarily in an Anglo-French context. Coss gives a good, broad overview of how studies of chivalry developed in English and French scholarship, then moves on to consider the historical origins and spread of chivalry in the Middle Ages. He hits on many of the major historians of chivalry (Keen, Crouch, Duby, Flori, Gillingham, Saul, and Kaeuper, among others) and deftly weaves their research together into an original and readable overview of the topic.
David Simkin follows with an entry on the “Organisation of Chivalric Society” in which he examines how medieval society was structured to support chivalry and knighthood. He opts to focus his attention on the actions of monarchies and he demonstrates that expansionary government policies could lead to common royal and noble goals. The king’s ability to act according to chivalric ideals was a key ingredient to this development, but that specific circumstances (and luck) could determine whether chivalric violence helped or hindered his ability to control the knightly class.
The next two articles cover the “orders” of chivalry and knighthood. David Green’s “The Secular Orders: Chivalry in the Service of the State” covers the chivalric orders of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, whereas Helen J. Nicholson’s “The Military Orders” discusses the Templars, Hospitallers, and others of their ilk. While the articles should probably have been swapped in the order of presentation, each provides a strong overview of the topics at hand. Helen Nicholson demonstrates with her customary aplomb that the religious military orders valued the same virtues as secular chivalry (e.g. prowess, bravery, loyalty, et alia) but without the payoff of individual worldly honor. This is an important consideration, but some discussion of how chivalric performance accrued spiritual honor (or hindered it) would have been welcome. David Green’s article focuses on chivalric orders, such as the Order of the Garter (England) and the Company of the Star (France), and shows that these orders gave knights the opportunity to perform chivalric qualities in a public fashion, but they also gave kings and rulers the chance to participate in the shaping of chivalry through the use of patronage and the granting or withholding of political opportunities.
The first of editor Robert W. Jones’ two articles is entitled “Marshalling the Chivalric Elite for War” and aims to show how knights were arrayed and fought in battle. After specifying that we know fairly little of the actual organization of knights on the battlefield, he gives an interesting overview of the available evidence, primarily from France and England. He discusses the terms most familiar to military organization: bannerets, conroi, constabularia, and retinues, and he demonstrates that we cannot create a firm and permanent structure for an army out of them (and we are not even sure of their relationships among themselves). Overall, he shows the complexities inherent in trying to conceptualize medieval armies along the lines of “professional” forces of the early modern and modern era, but he also demonstrates effectively that medieval armies were not devoid of small-unit structures and tactics.
Peter Sposato and Samuel Claussen team up in the next article contrasting chivalric violence in medieval Florence and Castile. While Sposato handles the Italian section and Claussen the Spanish, both approach the question of chivalric violence from a very Kaeuperian framing, with a focus on the contradictions inherent in the embrace and anxiety around chivalric violence among medieval society. Both also utilize imaginative literature very effectively to illuminate aspects of chivalric behavior- in Italy it fills a void created by the antipathy of the Florentine chroniclers, while in Spain (and especially in the Cid) it demonstrates how chivalric virtues could and should be performed. It is here that we see martial violence being used as a mechanism for performing royal service and loyalty being predicated on the idea that knights would do glorious deeds of prowess in its name. In both cases, Sposato and Claussen admirably bring the focus of chivalry south of the Alps and Pyrenees- locations too often ignored in the Anglo-French approach to chivalry.
Richard Barber follows with an article entitled “Chivalry in the Tournament and the Pas d’Armes”. The article is well-written and gives a good, concise overview of the development of tournaments from local events designed to train knights for war to the fourteenth century national occasions of sport and chivalric pageantry. As part of this shift towards tournaments as a “friendly” competition, Barber discusses the use of blunted weapons beginning in the thirteenth century, and he ties this into an argument that the chivalric ethos was designed to moderate violence (which puts this article into direct discussion with its predecessor). Barber situates the tournament at the heart of the development of chivalry, and he ties it intimately with the image of chivalry present in imaginative literature.
The next two articles return to some of the nuts-and-bolts of chivalry and knighthood in Robert Jones’ second offering- “Heraldry and Heralds”- and Ralph Moffatt’s “Arms and Armour”. In the first, Jones gives a strong overview of the development of heraldry from its origins in the Low Countries in the mid-twelfth century (despite some earlier antecedents) and its tie in with the rise of seals and literacy. He shows how great houses developed coats of arms and had their dependent knights fight under them, and how by the mid-thirteenth century knightly families were developing their own. Ultimately, he argues persuasively that heraldry was born out of the performative nature of chivalry.
Moffatt’s article is an examination of traditional medieval weapons and armor with a focus on those that were considered “chivalrous” and “unchivalrous”. His look at weapons begins with a look at the sword, followed by the lance, and finishes with a look at pollaxes. He then discusses, briefly, the “unchivalrous” ranged weapons- bows, crossbows, and guns- before moving onto armor. These are good overviews, but the lack of discussion of axes and maces was somewhat surprising. His discussion of armor begins with linen, has a brief section on chain mail, and a long, extended discussion of plate, which certainly makes sense given the late medieval pageantry of chivalric display, though more treatment of chain would have been welcome given its long lifespan as the mainstay of knightly protection. The article finishes with a brief discussion of horse barding and tournament armor. Overall, Moffatt gives a good overview of the weapons and armor available to and most often used by knights.
Oliver Creighton develops the link between space and chivalry in his article “Constructing Chivalric Landscapes: Aristocratic Spaces Between Image and Reality”. Creighton brings landscape studies to bear on our understanding of chivalry, primarily through a study of castle complexes, and he demonstrates effectively how landscape, like literature, was not just a mirror of cultural ideals, but a shaper of them as well. His argument is persuasive and original, though the article itself would have benefited from more images and visuals, especially given its subject matter.
Louise J. Wilkinson’s “Gendered Chivalry” aims to refocus attention on how women navigated the realm of chivalric ideology. After showing that traditional approaches to chivalric studies tend to situate women as little more than objects of male attention, she moves on to show that women in fact placed a central, albeit often subordinate, role in the evolution of chivalry. As knightly families became nobles, she argues that the development of heraldry allowed women to participate more fully in chivalric culture, and that chivalry ultimately served to afford respect to noble women.
The next two articles consider the effect of two different sources of written inspiration for chivalry. Joanna Bellis and Megan G. Leitch’s article “Chivalric Literature” makes the compelling argument that in addition to all of its other connotations, chivalry was ultimately “a body of writing”. (241) This included epic and romantic literature, chivalric manuals, and biographies of “great” knights. They give a good survey of how well-established sources such as Froissart’s chronicle were purposed by the author as chivalric texts. While their contextualization of the texts would have benefited from more recent studies such as those by Andy King, their analysis is strong on how chronicles transmuted the horrors of battle into honor, and the violence into valor. (246) In examining chivalric romance, they show how romance could interrogate those who fell short of chivalric ideals, and could criticize the excesses of chivalric culture (the Alliterative Morte Arthure is a fine examine), though inclusion of recent treatments of these themes by historians such as Richard Kaeuper would have been welcome.
Matthew Bennett continues the examination of the connection between chivalric and writing in his article “Manuals of Warfare and Chivalry”. Bennett’s focus begins on the most popular text on warfare in the Latin west during the period- Vegetius’ De Re Militari. Bennett argues that, like the Church Fathers, Vegetius was “the touchstone for military knowledge” and represented Roman authority for medieval readers. (265) After giving a strong overview of Byzantine and Carolingian examples, Bennett repurposes the Penitential Ordinance of 1070 (issued after the battle of Hastings) as a text that shows acceptable military behavior among the Normans. For Bennett, manuals were at the core of chivalry because chivalry was part of a professionalized approach to warfare by the medieval warrior class.
The final two articles examine how chivalry persisted into post-medieval contexts. The first is Matthew Woodcock’s “The End of Chivalry? Survivals and Revivals of the Tudor Age”. Woodcock begins with an important proviso that almost since the “birth” of chivalry there were complaints about its perceived demise (the laments of Chretien de Troyes in Yvain come to mind). Woodcock, however, has no interest in finding the “end” of chivalry, but rather in analyzing what commentators meant when they claimed that it had ended. He posits that nostalgia played an omnipresent role in chivalry. This nostalgic approach was of particular importance to the Tudors and its persistence beyond as a secular code of honor calls into question the notion of a firm temporal “end” to chivalry.
Claire Simmons’ article “Chivalric Medievalism” begins with Mark Twain’s famous comment in Life on the Mississippi that Sir Walter Scott not only revived chivalry in the American South, but caused the US Civil War as well! She offers a good overview of the America notion of what it meant to be “chivalrous” and the social value that chivalric style and architecture brought to new monies elites. She draws strong connections between chivalry, muscular Christianity, and the Boy Scouts, and ties the allure of chivalry to the rags-to-riches style of the American Western. All in all, her article serves as a fitting and illuminating end to the discussion on chivalry.
This volume is designed to illuminate the evolution and impact of chivalry across time and discipline in the Middle Ages and beyond. The articles are uniformly of high quality, and the arrangement makes logical and thematic sense. Ultimately, scholars and students alike will find this volume of great and persistent value for a long time to come.
Craig M Nakashian
Texas A&M University-Texarkana
