Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe

Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe PDF Author: Richard Kaeuper
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019154275X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Medieval Europe was a rapidly developing society with a problem of violent disorder. Professor Kaeuper's original and authoritative study reveals that chivalry was not simply part of the solution. Chivalry praised heroic violence by knights, and fused such displays of prowess with honour, piety, high status, and attractiveness to women. Though the vast body of chivalric literature, here examined, praises chivalry as necessary to civilization, most texts also worry over knightly violence, criticize all ideals and practices of chivalry, and often propose reforms. The knights themselves joined the debate, absorbing some reforms, ignoring others, sometimes proposing their own. Complexity likewise characterized the interaction of chivalry with major governing institutions ("church" and "state") emerging at the same time: kings and clerics both needed and feared the force of knighthood. This fascinating book lays bare the conflicts and paradoxes surrounding the concept of chivalry in medieval Europe.

Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe

Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe PDF Author: Richard Kaeuper
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019154275X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Get Book Here

Book Description
Medieval Europe was a rapidly developing society with a problem of violent disorder. Professor Kaeuper's original and authoritative study reveals that chivalry was not simply part of the solution. Chivalry praised heroic violence by knights, and fused such displays of prowess with honour, piety, high status, and attractiveness to women. Though the vast body of chivalric literature, here examined, praises chivalry as necessary to civilization, most texts also worry over knightly violence, criticize all ideals and practices of chivalry, and often propose reforms. The knights themselves joined the debate, absorbing some reforms, ignoring others, sometimes proposing their own. Complexity likewise characterized the interaction of chivalry with major governing institutions ("church" and "state") emerging at the same time: kings and clerics both needed and feared the force of knighthood. This fascinating book lays bare the conflicts and paradoxes surrounding the concept of chivalry in medieval Europe.

Holy Warriors

Holy Warriors PDF Author: Richard W. Kaeuper
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812207920
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
The medieval code of chivalry demanded that warrior elites demonstrate fierce courage in battle, display prowess with weaponry, and avenge any strike against their honor. They were also required to be devout Christians. How, then, could knights pledge fealty to the Prince of Peace, who enjoined the faithful to turn the other cheek rather than seek vengeance and who taught that the meek, rather than glorious fighters in tournaments, shall inherit the earth? By what logic and language was knighthood valorized? In Holy Warriors, Richard Kaeuper argues that while some clerics sanctified violence in defense of the Holy Church, others were sorely troubled by chivalric practices in everyday life. As elite laity, knights had theological ideas of their own. Soundly pious yet independent, knights proclaimed the validity of their bloody profession by selectively appropriating religious ideals. Their ideology emphasized meritorious suffering on campaign and in battle even as their violence enriched them and established their dominance. In a world of divinely ordained social orders, theirs was blessed, though many sensitive souls worried about the ultimate price of rapine and destruction. Kaeuper examines how these paradoxical chivalric ideals were spread in a vast corpus of literature from exempla and chansons de geste to romance. Through these works, both clerics and lay military elites claimed God's blessing for knighthood while avoiding the contradictions inherent in their fusion of chivalry with a religion that looked back to the Sermon on the Mount for its ethical foundation.

Livre de Chevalerie

Livre de Chevalerie PDF Author: Richard W. Kaeuper
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812215796
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Charny was a knight who lived the chivalric life for nearly two decades in a manner thought ideal by his contemporaries, dying appropriately in battle at Poitiers in 1356. He was also the first documented owner of the Shroud of Turin. This volume establishes the cultural context in which Charny lived in the first section and sets forth in the second the French text of Charny's fascinating work alongside an English translation, with full critical apparatus. Paper edition (unseen), $17.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A Knight's Own Book of Chivalry

A Knight's Own Book of Chivalry PDF Author: Geoffroi de Charny
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812208684
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Book Description
On the great influence of a valiant lord: "The companions, who see that good warriors are honored by the great lords for their prowess, become more determined to attain this level of prowess." On the lady who sees her knight honored: "All of this makes the noble lady rejoice greatly within herself at the fact that she has set her mind and heart on loving and helping to make such a good knight or good man-at-arms." On the worthiest amusements: "The best pastime of all is to be often in good company, far from unworthy men and from unworthy activities from which no good can come." Enter the real world of knights and their code of ethics and behavior. Read how an aspiring knight of the fourteenth century would conduct himself and learn what he would have needed to know when traveling, fighting, appearing in court, and engaging fellow knights. Composed at the height of the Hundred Years War by Geoffroi de Charny, one of the most respected knights of his age, A Knight's Own Book of Chivalry was designed as a guide for members of the Company of the Star, an order created by Jean II of France in 1352 to rival the English Order of the Garter. This is the most authentic and complete manual on the day-to-day life of the knight that has survived the centuries, and this edition contains a specially commissioned introduction from historian Richard W. Kaeuper that gives the history of both the book and its author, who, among his other achievements, was the original owner of the Shroud of Turin.

Medieval France

Medieval France PDF Author: William W. Kibler
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 0824044444
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 2071

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Book Description
Arranged alphabetically, with a brief introduction that clearly defines the scope and purpose of the book. Illustrations include maps, B/W photographs, genealogical tables, and lists of architectural terms.

Handbook of Medieval Culture. Volume 1

Handbook of Medieval Culture. Volume 1 PDF Author: Albrecht Classen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110385449
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1223

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Book Description
A follow-up publication to the Handbook of Medieval Studies, this new reference work turns to a different focus: medieval culture. Medieval research has grown tremendously in depth and breadth over the last decades. Particularly our understanding of medieval culture, of the basic living conditions, and the specific value system prevalent at that time has considerably expanded, to a point where we are in danger of no longer seeing the proverbial forest for the trees. The present, innovative handbook offers compact articles on essential topics, ideals, specific knowledge, and concepts defining the medieval world as comprehensively as possible. The topics covered in this new handbook pertain to issues such as love and marriage, belief in God, hell, and the devil, education, lordship and servitude, Christianity versus Judaism and Islam, health, medicine, the rural world, the rise of the urban class, travel, roads and bridges, entertainment, games, and sport activities, numbers, measuring, the education system, the papacy, saints, the senses, death, and money.

French Romance of the Later Middle Ages

French Romance of the Later Middle Ages PDF Author: Rosalind Brown-Grant
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191564958
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Whilst French romances of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries have long enjoyed a privileged place in the literary history of France, romances from the later middle ages have been largely neglected by modern scholars, despite their central role in the chivalric culture of the day. In particular, although this genre has been seen as providing a forum within which ideas about masculine and feminine roles were debated and prescribed, little work has been done on the gender ideology of texts from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This study seeks to fill this gap in the scholarship by analysing how the views of gender found in earlier romances were reassessed and reshaped in the texts produced in the moralising intellectual environment of the later medieval period. In order to explore these topics, this book discusses fifteen historico-realist prose romances written in the century from 1390, many of which were commissioned at the court of Burgundy. It addresses key issues in recent studies of gender in medieval culture including the construction of chivalric masculinity, the representation of adolescent desire, and the social and sexual roles of husbands and wives. In addition to offering close readings of these texts, it shows how the romances of the period were informed by ideas about gender which circulated in contemporary works such as manuals of chivalry, moral treatises, and marriage sermons. It thus aims not only to provide the first in-depth study of this little-known area of French literary history, but also to question the critical consensus on the role of gender in medieval romance that has arisen from an exclusive focus on earlier works in the genre.

Scot. Text S.

Scot. Text S. PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English literature
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description


Gilbert of the Haye's Prose Manuscript (A.D.1456)

Gilbert of the Haye's Prose Manuscript (A.D.1456) PDF Author: John Horne Stevenson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Chivalry
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description


Medieval Knighthood V

Medieval Knighthood V PDF Author: S. D. Church
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 9780851156286
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
Examines a wide variety of the aspects of knighthood, ranging from its emergence as an identifiably noble estate to the appropriation of chivalric trappings to serve bourgeois interests.