Our king would protect you,’” Kaeuper says. “In a way it’s like mafia tactics: ‘You think the king of France can protect you? He can’t. That style of warfare was still endemic during the Hundred Years’ War of the 14th and 15th centuries, when England and France fought each other, laying waste to the countryside.

Kaeuper says few medieval texts describing chivalry warned against burning or looting towns or raping common women. “Ordinary women, shepherdesses, are just rather like for sport.”

“There’s a lot of courtesy-you want to be able to speak well to ladies, defend ladies,” Wollock says. Bulfinchs Medieval Mythology: The Age of Chivalry (Dover Books on Literature & Drama) by Bulfinch, Thomas and a great selection of related books. Chivalry has shaped modern ideas of romance. Yet even when knights did follow a code of chivalry as they understood it, these ideas about honor and good behavior focused mostly on concern for the noble class that knights were part of, often at the expense of the poor. The Age of ChivalryThe Age of Chivalry The code of chivalry for knights glorified combat and romantic love. That led some of them to question the slaughter of Muslims during the crusades. On the flip side, Wollock says, chivalric culture encouraged knights to develop their own sense of morality rather than simply relying on church authorities. George rescues a captive princess by killing her captor, a dragon. Chivalry The Italian painter Paolo Uccello captures the spirit of the age of chivalry in this painting, St. At around age 21, a squire became a full-fledged knight. The capture of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade.įine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images A Code for the Noble Class Only At around age 14, the page reached the rank of squire.

The age of chivalry