Is (Medieval) Chivalry Dead?

In this episode Richard distinguishes between the popular modern conception of chivalry, which originated in the romantic movement of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and became the code of the gentleman, and medieval chivalry. Richard and his co-host, his wife Ellen, explore what medieval chivalry entailed, the role it played in protecting the social status of knights in a time of economic change, and the relationship between courtly love and martial prowess.  Richard uses Ulrich von Liechtenstein’s  The Service of Ladies as a window on chivalry as conceived by at least one knight in the first half of the thirteenth century. We should warn you in advance that The Service of Ladies is a truly weird book. It takes the form of a memoir in which the German nobleman, knight, and author of love poetry Ulrich von Liechtenstein relates how he dressed in women’s clothing to assume the persona of Lady Venus and traveled with an entourage from Venice to Vienna and beyond challenging all knights to joust with him to demonstrate his love for his lady, an older married noblewoman whom he had served as a page and whom he had only glimpsed from afar since. 

     Our next episode will explore some less eccentric elements of chivalry through the person of the late twelfth and early thirteenth-century English knight William Marshal, who was praised after his death as the “greatest knight in the world.” 

Listen on Podurama https://podurama.com

Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at richard.abels54@gmail.com

Transcript

Script for chivalry

Ellen: Were you serious when you said that chivalry is dead, or was that just another Monty Python reference?

Richard: I am completely serious about medieval chivalry being dead. It outlasted the Middle Ages but expired centuries ago. I’m waffling a bit because medieval chivalry and what most people think chivalry is are two different things.

Ellen: I remember years ago you got a surprise email from the New York Times asking you to join in an online debate about chivalry.

Richard: The question was:  “Should chivalry die, be brought back, or evolve into a more inclusive ethos that is appropriate for today?” They asked six of us to comment. The others were journalists and bloggers. I was the token academic historian. Scott Farrell, the founder of the website Chivalry Today, emphasized the relevance and societal benefits of chivalry, which he defined as a complex ethical and philosophical code that includes ideals like honesty, justice, courtesy and enterprise, but has at its heart service to others. The others debated whether gentlemanly and protective attitudes and behavior toward women were respectful and to be encourage or condescending and based on outdated gender assumptions. 

I was the outlier. Obviously, I recognized the popular conception of chivalry as the actions of a gentleman--Sir Walter Ralegh sacrificing his cloak so Queen Elizabeth wouldn’t get her feet muddied--and understood that it was probably what the New York Times editors meant by the question. I also recognized Farrell’s code of the gentleman. But as a slightly pedantic medieval historian, 

Ellen: “slightly?”

Richard: Okay more than slightly. Nonetheless, as an academic medieval historian I had to take exception.  When I think of chivalry, it is medieval chivalry.

And that was an aristocratic ethos designed to distinguish the self-defined military nobility of medieval Europe from those whom they considered their social inferiors, especially rich merchants with pretensions. 

Medieval chivalry combined the virtues of the knight as warrior — skill in combat with the proper weapons, horsemanship, courage and loyalty to one’s lord — with courtliness, that is the manners and behavior that enhanced a lord’s court, and medieval Christian values. Wealth was admired if rightly used. 

Ellen: Meaning what? [AT 4:55]

Richard. Generosity was a core value, and one emphasized by minstrels, troubadours, and household knights. A chivalrous knight used his wealth to reward and honor friends and family. That distinguished him from the merchant, who used money to make more money, which is base and common. 

The capitalist ethos was anathema. 

Ellen: If the great nobles were profiting from the commercial revolution of the twelfth century, why the hostility toward merchants? [7:40]

The social status of knights in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries was threatened by the rise of a wealthy merchant class in the growing towns and cities. Wealth in the early Middle Ages had been the surest indicator of noble rank. But the commercial revolution of the High Middle Ages changed that.  Lesser nobles, suffering from the inflation of the late twelfth century and the increasing expense of nobility, looked to the great barons for patronage and felt resentment against merchants and peasants alike.   A successful merchant could afford the trappings of nobility, expensive clothing and food, better than these petty nobles and certainly better than household knight.  This hostility is well expressed in a poem by a late twelfth-century lesser noble, the really snarky troubadour, Bertran de Born. Bertran incited the sons of King Henry II of England to revolt against him, because war meant pay and, more importantly, loot and pillage.  Bertan was particularly irked by merchants, whom he dismissed as peasants, who were rich. “It pleases me immensely,” Bertran 

   It pleases me immensely 
    when I see rotten rich people 
    suffer, the ones who make 
    trouble for noblemen, and it 
    pleases me when I see them 
    destroyed, twenty or thirty 
    from day to day, when I find 
    them without clothes, and 
    begging for bread. If I'm 
    lying, may my lady lie to me! 

   A peasant has the habits of a 
    pig, for he is bored by noble 
    living; when a man rises to 
    great riches, his wealth drives 
    him mad. So you must keep 
    his empty in all seasons, 
    spend what's his, and expose 
    him to wind and rain. 

   Whoever doesn't ruin his 
    peasant sustains him in 
    disloyalty. So a man's a fool 
    who doesn't knock him down 
    when he sees him climbing 
    up, because once peasant has 
    established himself, once he 
    entrenches himself in a very 
    strong place, he has no peer 
    in evil, for he spoils everything 
    he can reach. 

   A man should never feel sorry 
    for a peasant if he sees him 
    break an arm or a leg or do 
    without something he needs. 
    For a peasant--so help me 
    God--doesn't want to use 
    what he has to help even his 
    closest kin, not for tears, not 
    for pity; he naturally shuns 
    any such deed. 

   A low rascally gang, full of 
    tricks and usury, pride and 
    excess! You can't endure 
    their deeds, for they toss God 
    aside along with all loyalty 
    and right. They do just as 
    Adam did. God give them 
    bad luck! Amen. 

Ellen: [sarcastically] Bertran was really a nice guy, wasn’t he? [10:05]

Richard: Bertran was the medieval poet laureate of snarkiness, and was notorious for his poem inciting the sons of King Henry II of England to revolt against him. Civil war was a good time for impoverished knights.

Ellen: Bertran does mention his Lady.  So far you’ve left out courtly love. [10:25]

Richard: Noble women—and the emphasis here needs to be on “noble”--were to be protected and wooed with poetry, deeds, and sweet words. Refined flirting was a chivalric skill. 

Ellen: So that was the medieval code of chivalry? [10:56]

Richard: There wasn’t one code of chivalry. Medieval chivalry was an evolving and contested ethos which kings and Churchmen tried to coopt. But it was the knights themselves in their daily practice and in the stories they favored who really defined what chivalry was. 

Ellen: You say that the knights themselves defined what chivalry was. Can you give a historical example of a chivalric knight of the High Middle Ages? [11:17]

Richard: That’s a loaded question. I know whom you would choose, the English knight William Marshal

Ellen:  He was called the greatest knight in the world.

Richard: And I think he deserves an episode to himself. My choice is a more obscure early thirteenth-century knight from southern Austria:  sound bite introducing Ulrich von Liechtenstein. 

Not the Ulrich von Liechtenstein of “A Knight’s Tale.” I mean the real Ulrich von Liechtenstein.  The film’s screenwriter and director Brian Helgeland  choice of that nom de guerre for the movie’s hero, a commoner aspiring to be a tournament champion. is an easter egg for medievalists. The real Ulrich is a more interesting and far weirder character. His story is a window on how at least some knights in the first half of the thirteenth century understood and practiced chivalry.

Ellen: Okay, who was this Ulrich von Liechtenstein?

Richard: Ulrich von Liechtenstein was a German ministerial knight from a lesser but wealthy noble family in the Duchy of Styria in what is now southwestern Austria, Slovenia, and, of course, the postage stamp country of Liechenstein. He was born around 1200 and died in 1275, an unusually long life span for a layman of this era.  Ulrich was a mover and shaker in the politics of the duchy, and served the duke as seneschal, marshal, and provincial judge. But the only reason he is known today is because he was a prolific minnesinger. A minnesinger, literally love-singer, was the German version of the southern French troubadour and northern French trouvere. These were poet-musicians, some of whom came from the upper nobility, who composed, at the lyrics and often the music, to love songs they performed. Their songs praised the beauty and virtue of a lady to whom they professed their love. 

18:24 Ellen: Never heard that before. Is it one of Ulrich’s songs?

Yes, but sung by a chorus. Ulrich would have sung the song alone and accompanied himself probably on a lute.

18:34 Why choose Ulrich von Liechtenstein rather than some other minnesinger or troubadour?

          What sets Ulrich apart from other minnesingers is a truly eccentric work, Frauendienst, service to ladies, a collection of poems that he finished in 1255. “Service to Ladies” is written as a first person memoir recounting two costumed tours he made challenging knights he met to jousts. The first, undertaken when he was 26, was his Venusfahrt, Venus journey, in which he dressed in drag as the Goddess of Love, and fought jousts along a route that took him from Venice to the modern day Czech Republic.  The second, undertaken fourteen years late, was his Artusfahrt.  Now costumed as King Arthur he wandered around Austria seeking to joust with the best knights in each locale. Those who broke three lances jousting with him he asked to join his Round Table, assigning them the name of one of the knights. When the Table was filled, he assembled them to participate in a round-robin tournament to prove who was the greatest knight of the Round Table.

Short bio followed by description of Venusfahrt and Frauendienst. 

20: 51 Ellen: She must have been quite a bit older than he was if he had served her as a page. And wasn’t she married?

Richard: Yep, and so was he.  About Ulrich stopping off to visit his wife.

25:13 Ellen:  And where was his wife during all of this?

26 Ellen: does all of “The Service of Ladies” sound like it was written by Dr. Seuss? 

26:17: :  I can tell you now, I wouldn’t have been so understanding and loving. 

26:28 Well you did say that marriage had little to do with courtly love. Okay, back to the story.

28 Ellen:  The Service of Women sounds more like a Monty Python skit than any medieval romance I’ve read, and I’ve read a lot of them. Surely Ulrich wasn’t being serious

Richard: I thought so too when I first heard about Ulrich, but when I sat down and read the Frauendienst, I realized that he was serious and was writing a handbook of sorts for other knights.  The point was to emphasize how chivalric he is.  Most of the poem is taken up by the Venusfahrt as he lovingly describes all of the jousts he fought and won, boasting that he personally shattered 307 lances and gave out 271 rings to worthy adversaries over five weeks.  Chivalry in the first half of the thirteenth century had at its heart prowess.  Ulrich lived at a time and place in which there was little war, other than going on crusade, in which to demonstrate one’s worth as a knight. Tournaments and jousting were the solution, and Ulrich made the most of it. The Venusfahrt had less to do with honoring his putative lady love than it did with acquiring honor—that is enhancing his reputation among other nobles.

29:40 Ellen: And what should we make about the comic lengths which he went to to win the love of the Lady?

Richard: His willingness to undergo medieval plastic surgery, chop off a pinky (I can hear him say, but it grew back), dress as Frau Venus and challenge all those knights to joust, dress as and mingle with lepers, and suffer the indignity of having his chosen lady drop him into the moat, pledging to go crusade in her honor—and do all of that without even getting more than a chaste kiss and a hand held—was evidence of his dedication to the service of ladies, even if this particular lady in the end turned out not to be properly appreciative or apparently properly faithful.

30:36 Ellen: When Ulrich said he wanted the lady’s love, what did he mean by it? I remember reading that courtly love was supposed to be pure and ennobling. As you said, courtly love had little to do with marriage, because noble marriages were like the mergers of companies and courtly love was love for its own sake. 

Richard:  Ulrich’s attitude toward love and sex in The Service of Women is pretty strange. 19th century romantics liked to stress that chivalric love was platonic (except, of course, for the adulterous affairs of Lancelot and Guenevere and Tristan and Isolde, neither of which turned out well). But Ulrich is clear that he expected his reward to be physical—despite the fact that both he and the Lady were married! When he finally is allowed in the presence of the lady, he insistently pressures her to have sex with him. He persists after she tells him that she is a married woman and that her honor is at stake.

Ellen: I thought that courtly love placed the lady on a pedestal. Pressuring his lady for sex doesn’t sound much like putting her on a pedestal. 

Richard: Worse, not only did he repeatedly beg her for his “reward,” but when she finally allowed him to climb up the castle wall and enter into her chamber, he found it filled with women to protect her from him forcing his attentions upon her—which he fully admits! 

“I’ll not contend with her a bit 

against her will, I’ll admit

it’s just that I know those here

would very quickly interfere

If there weren’t such a lot of you,

I’d wrestle her. When we were through,

She’d grant me the victory.

I’ll tell this is what would be.”

Ellen: Okay, medieval Dr. Seuss for adults. Seriously, this sounds a lot like rape.

Richard:  It actually sounds a lot like Jacques Le Gris’ version of what happened between him and de Carrouges’ wife in “The Last Duel.” A lady is expected to resist, but that is part of the game.  The point is that Ulrich doesn’t write this as a confession of his failings. It is too matter of fact. He is simply telling it like it is—and expects his audience to approve. 

Ellen: And that was courtly chivalry?

Richard: I said before that chivalry wasn’t a code but a contested ethos. The proper way to treat women was part of that. Troubadours and knights could write love songs in praise of the beauty and longing for the love of the wives of their lords, and household knights could imagine themselves as Lancelot or Tristan. There was status and prestige in imagining that a great lady might condescend to love them. But real adultery, that is the adultery of a married countess or some other great lady was a serious matter that a nobleman could not ignore or frogive. Being cuckolded meant the possibility that one’s heir was not of one’s own lineage, and there was nothing more shameful than that, Courtly love or as the romances term it fin amour, fine loving, was for the most part a game played by courtiers to demonstrate a particular type of prowess, the prowess of elegant flirting. It was the reckless and foolish knight who took it too far. One of the great patrons of chivalry in the late twelfth century was Philip of Alsace, count of Flanders. He was a patron of Chretien de Troyes, the author of “Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart,” which introduced the story of Lancelot and Guenevere. Apparently one of Philip’s household knights took that story too seriously and had sex with Philip’s wife. He could do little to her besides beat her.  Her family was powerful and her dowry was too rich to return. But the household knight was a different story. Philip had him stripped and tied up. At dawn he released him to make a break for freedom, and then had his other knights hunt him down like a stag. After being caught and mauled by the dogs, Philip turned him over to the kitchen staff to beat him. He then had the still living unfortunate knight hung upside down in a latrine until he died.. Of course, Philip himself was free to have as many sexual affairs as he wanted, and married women if they were commoners were fair game.

Ellen: It looks like we are out of time and you still haven’t talked about courage, warfare, restraint--what you termed mesure--, the practice of courtliness within a court, knightly piety, or even loyalty to a lord. Ulrich’s “The Service of Ladies” may be fun, but it doesn’t seem to incorporate all of what you said chivalry was in the thirteenth century.

Richard:  You’re right, which is a really strong argument for the next episode being about William Marshal. Marshal’s practical chivalry is a good balance for Ulrich’s theatrical chivalry. So on to William Marshal!

Ellen Yay!

Richard: No, I said that Ulrich devoted most of the poem to his jousting during his Venus journey. He does mention tournaments at the beginning of the poem, but the joust and the tournament were different activities designed to demonstrate a knight’s prowess. A tournament might include jousting but that was secondary to the melee. A melee was a mock battle fought on a marked out field. They originated in the twelfth century as exercises to hone the skills needed for actual combat The contestants were often teams fighting under the banner of their particular lord and patron, a count, king, or wealthy baron. The melee featured not only knights on horseback but also foot soldiers, as in real battles. The melee was dangerous—even a knight fully armored in mail could suffer concussions, broken  bones from blows and falls, and there was always the danger of being trampled by horses. Steps were taken to lessen these dangers—blunted weapons, greater padding beneath the armor—but the risk even of death was always there. But the point was not to kill or even seriously injure an opponent. Knights profited by taking other knights prisoners, and the loser forfeited his horse and armor to the winner who could later ransom these essential items back if he had the cash. Partying followed fighting. 

The popular conception of tournaments is a series of jousts. A joust pitted two knights on horseback tilting against each other. They charged, lowering their lances as they approached their opponent. The point—pun intended—was to strike an opponent solidly. The best hit was one that unhorsed an opponent, but by the time of Ulrich’s Venus journey, success was measured by the shattering of the lance. Jousting lances were made of soft pine whereas war lances were made of hard ash wood.  During the thirteenth century, the list was instituted as a safety measure, featuring a barrier separating the charging knights so that the horses could not accidentally run into each other. The joust began as a secondary event but gained increasing popularity in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Throughout the thirteenth century the theatrical aspects of the tournament became more prominent—and with it, the expense of tourneying, especially for the noble who hosted it.  The tournament became a 'THEATER', a public arena in which barons could show-off their prowess, their chivalric qualities, and their WEALTH. Feasts and pageantry (songs, dances, and formal processions) took up more and more time, and the presence of ladies became an accepted and necessary aspect of the games (knights by the middle of the thirteenth century would fight bearing the sleeves of ladies). This added the proceedings an erotic undercurrent, which might help explain the growing popularity of JOUSTING. Jousting, which emphasized individual martial skills, did not prepare a soldier as well for warfare as did the melee, but it did allow him to be the focus of attention as he demonstrated his prowess. In essence, the purpose of the tournament was changing. Though tournaments never completely lost their military value, they became increasingly stages for chivalric pageantry, demonstrations of chivalry and aristocracy. The tournament was the place in which a nobleman could distinguish himself from a burgher.

One churchman observed disapprovingly,that 

CONCLUSION

Medieval chivalry survived the Middle Ages but gradually disappeared along with the military elite that fostered it. Lord Byron said that it was killed with a smile by Don Quixote, but even when Cervantes was writing in the early 17th century chivalry was alive and well among an aristocracy that still defined themselves as warriors, even if they no longer were. But medieval chivalry died with the passing of the aristocratic society that fostered and practiced it. What we have today is an echo of what was that owes as much to the 19th century romantic movement and the emergence in that century of a new elite, the middle class gentleman of means, as it does to the Middle Ages.