The Age of Chivalry

by Hywel Williams

  THE NOBILITY AND PATRONAGE

  The great territorial lords often had a family history extending back to the Carolingian period, and the term “noble” was used to describe kinship groups whose names and distinguished ancestry were known and widely respected. Noble groups intermarried and recognized, initially, the importance of both the female and the paternal line of ancestry when it came to establishing their identity, rights and inheritances. Charlemagne used this international nobility to rule his empire, and its descendants included the aristocracy of the central Middle Ages. By then however noble status had changed substantially. Aristocratic families were now defining themselves exclusively in terms of the patrilineal line, and they were strongly identified with a particular piece of property which, handed down through the generations, often supplied the family’s name. Titles such as “count” and “duke” were originally handed out in recognition of royal service, but although they increased a family’s prestige these honors were not intrinsic to noble status. In early medieval Europe not even kings could turn those who were not noble by birth into members of the nobility.

  RIGHT Charlemagne with his court, illustrated in Spiegel Historiael, Jacob van Maerlant’s Dutch translation, written in the 1280s, of Vincent of Beaurais’s Speculum Maius.

  Great territorial lords identified themselves as warriors, and their material needs in that regard grew during the central Middle Ages. Technological advances in warfare, such as the heavy cavalry, meant new costs, and since war had gained in complexity the nobility needed more time to train and prepare for battle. Europe’s reorganized countryside produced the wealth that helped to meet these aristocratic requirements. Some nobles also asserted themselves by seizing territory that, along with its inhabitants, was then controlled from a castle. The very greatest of these aristocrats administered vast estates acquired through inheritance and by land grants from the king. Closely governed territorial principalities evolved as a result and, in the case of France, these were eventually absorbed by the Crown and redistributed to younger members of the royal family. As territorial monarchies increased in power during the later Middle Ages so the aristocracy adapted to new circumstances and decided to accept more royal offices, titles and patronage. The adoption of an elaborate system of ranking for groupings within the nobility demonstrated the aristocracy’s determination to maintain itself as a separate and privileged cast. Nonetheless, they were all subordinated to the ruler, who could now ennoble whoever he wanted.

  Knights started to appear on the European scene from the 11th century onward, and the spread of knighthood as both an institution and an ethical code affected the warrior group in profound ways. Early medieval armies were composed of free men who differed widely in terms of their wealth, and knights likewise differed greatly in terms of their material riches as well as in social status. Great aristocrats called themselves knights, and so did lords whose lands could be decidedly modest. It was, however, the professionalism of the knight that established his distinctiveness as a specialist warrior—a category of the fighting man which was new in European history and thought. All knights moreover, whether possessed of broad acres or not, were equally bound by the code of chivalry. Despite the extreme diversity between the lesser knights and minor nobles on the one hand, and great aristocrats on the other, the common warrior-culture, expressed in the literature and ideology of chivalry, was a real social bond that excluded those who did not share it.

  The exchange of loyalties between superiors and inferiors was a fundamental feature of European social order in the central Middle Ages. Its expression was various. Aristocrats, lesser nobles and knights asserted themselves by promising to protect inferiors who undertook vows of obligation. Myriad relationships of power were thereby asserted between, for example, the great nobles of the warrior class and fighting men of lower status who depended on them for support, with grants of land and income drawn from the lord’s resources carrying with them the hope of social advancement. Some knights of a modest social standing were therefore owed loyalty from their “vassals” while in turn incurring obligations to great territorial lords. Similarly, the territorial lords were themselves vassals of monarchs as a result of receiving royal favors—most typically in the form of land grants. The recurring link in all these relationships is “lordship,” and that institution provided the context for the reciprocal transmission of respect and obligation that was such a defining feature of European society between the 11th and 14th centuries.

  The “feudum” (also called a “fief”)—a form of property holding common in France and England—provided a localized and specific application of lordship, and its tenures could be either free or un-free. Knight service was the principal form of a free tenure, with military duties being performed for the king or another lord, although by the mid-12th century this service was usually commuted in England on payment of a tax called scutage. Socage was another free tenure, and its principal service, provided usually by tenants of more modest standing, was frequently agricultural—such as performing a certain number of days’ plowing for the lord. All these tenures were subject to a number of conditions such as relief (the payment made on transferring a fief to an heir) and escheat (the return of the fief to the lord when the tenant died without an heir). The main type of un-free tenure was villeinage, which started as a barely modified form of servitude. Free tenants’ duties were predetermined, but those who were un-free never knew in advance what they might be asked to do for their lords, although the legal ruling that villein tenants could not be ejected in breach of existing custom eventually came to apply.

  TRANSCENDING TRAGEDY

  By the mid-14th century the effects of famine and plague were starting to drive down Europe’s population levels. But those who survived could also prosper. Competition for labor drove up wages in real terms, and the scarcity of workers depressed rural rents. A falling population led to a drop in the cost of basic foodstuffs such as wheat, and workers could therefore diversify their diets. The increased consumption of dairy products and meats was a feature of the subsequent population increase, and the greater purchasing power enjoyed by workers also meant they could afford the manufactured products developed in the towns. That level of demand therefore benefited the urban economies, and despite the overall decline in Europe’s population levels during the 14th and 15th centuries the number of European towns with more than 10,000 inhabitants increased.

  The European recovery of the 15th century saw a cycle of growth re-establishing itself with increasing population levels, civic development and governmental activity producing a renewed demand for goods, food and services. The manorial system had long since been in decline, and it was further undermined by the period’s emphasis on large-scale commercial crops such as wool and grain, as well as by the emancipation of servile labor. Manufacturing boomed, especially in areas geared to supplying armies and fleets with cloth, armor, weapons and ships. Technological advances produced labor-saving devices—such as the printing press—that increased worker productivity. Central Europe’s large deposits of iron, copper, gold and silver were intensively worked by new mining techniques, and metalworking technology attained greater levels of refinement. All these economic developments gave new opportunities for the substantial capital investment that was fast becoming the defining feature of the European economy and the basis for its future sustained growth.

  ABOVE The Black Death, which peaked in the mid-14th century, killed up to half of Europe’s population. This illustration of plague sufferers is from the 1411 Toggenburg Bible.

  YORK: 16 MARCH 1190

  Until the late 11th century Jews in Europe had faced little persecution. Adherence to Judaism was regarded as an inexplicable rejection of the Christian gospel, but papal commands forbade the use of force to convert Jews and they often pursued the same careers as Christians. However, from the time of the First Crusade onward hostility to Judaism became very widespread in Europe as the continent’s culture started to define
itself in an increasingly aggressive Christian fashion.

  Jews had always been seen as stubborn, but they were now also viewed as a malevolent force bent on destroying society from within. It was the increasing restrictions on their professional careers that turned so many Jews to money lending, a practice forbidden to Christians, and their prominence in that trade gave a new and vicious twist to anti-Semitic sentiment.

  In 1170 William the Conqueror invited a number of Jews to move from Rouen in Normandy and settle in England, where they became the kernel of the country’s earliest substantial Jewish community. The financial skills of English Jews served the Anglo-Norman Crown well in subsequent decades, and they enjoyed special privileges as a result. A royal charter issued by Henry I (r. 1100–35) gave Jews the right to move around the country without paying tolls, to buy and sell property, and to swear on the Torah rather than the Christian Bible. For most of the 12th century Jews enjoyed greater security in England than on the continent, and their numbers increased through immigration after the expulsion of French Jews in 1182 by King Philip Augustus.

  Preparations for English participation in the Third Crusade, however, exposed the country’s Jews to new levels of danger. Houses in the City of London’s Jewish quarter (“Old Jewry”) were attacked in the days following the coronation of Richard I (“the Lionheart”) on September 3, 1189, and after the king’s departure on crusade anti-Semitic violence spread to the counties of Essex and Norfolk. The city of York had seen extensive anti-Jewish rioting in early March 1190, and Jewish families were granted refuge within York Castle by its constable. Congregated within a central wooden tower, the Jews were then surrounded by a mob outside the castle walls who demanded their immediate conversion to Christianity on pain of death. When the warden left the castle the Jews, fearful of the consequences of opening the gates, refused to readmit him and a siege by the local militia followed. On March 16 the tower caught fire and most of the Jews killed themselves rather than face the Christian mob. Those who did surrender were then killed, despite having received assurances of their safety. At least 150 Jews died. The ringleaders of the massacre subsequently burned documents kept in York Cathedral which specified the local debts owed to the dead Jews. English Jews were supposed to come under the king’s special protection and the murders did not go unpunished. But it was the harm to its financial interests that really motivated the Crown, since an attack on Jews was also an attack on its own revenue resources. Some 50 of York’s citizens were fined, and King Richard I introduced a system whereby debts held by Jews were duplicated to the Crown.

  Jews wearing identifying pointed hats and yellow rouelle badges are burned at the stake in 1348, in this illustration from the Lucerne Chronicle of 1513.

  MEDIEVAL CULTURE

  c.400–1300

  Medieval European culture reflected the dominant role of the Christian Church as arbiter of human conduct and as authoritative guide to the truths revealed by God in the person of Christ. The magisterium or teaching authority claimed by the clergy expressed orthodox belief, and the Church’s disciplinary powers, based on scriptural interpretation and formulated in canon law, prescribed correct behavior. Astrology retained a widespread appeal despite its implicit contradiction of the Christian doctrines that asserted God’s sovereign omnipotence. Predictions concerning the future persisted therefore, and a belief in magic, witchcraft and the powers of good and evil spirits subsisted beneath the official structures of ecclesiastical order.

  Christianity was also the filter through which a selective interpretation of ancient Roman culture was transmitted to Europe’s evolving medieval civilization. Latin was used for the celebration of the Mass, and it was also the medium of communication used by both the Church’s officialdom and that of secular princes. As a result, the language acquired a new lease of life—albeit one that was prone to bureaucracy’s stiff jargon. When it came to preaching sermons a good deal of pragmatism was needed by priests if they were to communicate with a largely illiterate population. Most, therefore, opted for a kind of rustic Latin patois (rustica Romana lingua). Alternatively, they used one of the vernacular European languages that were acquiring a distinctive form by the eighth century—such as Theotiscam, a form of early German.

  GOVERNING IN THE ROMAN STYLE

  The kings of early medieval Europe ruled in a Roman style after establishing themselves in the former imperial territories. They issued laws for their own people and for their newly acquired subjects who had been Roman citizens, and the coins they struck were modeled on imperial currency. Although these kingdoms—Frankish, Lombard, Anglo-Saxon, Visigothic in Spain and Ostrogothic in Italy—were newly formed, they preferred to be considered as old. Antiquity lent authority, just as it had done in ancient Rome. The officially sponsored histories of these peoples, such as Paul the Deacon’s History of the Lombards written in the 790s, claimed therefore that the kingdoms had a longer established, and more exclusive, ethnic foundation than was in fact the case.

  RIGHT An image from the 15th cenury Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry depicting young Parisian aristocrats on horseback.

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  MEDIEVAL CULTURE

  c.731 The English monk Bede has finished writing his Ecclesiastical History of the English People. The anno domini order of chronology that he adopts will become the European norm.

  910 Foundation of Cluny Abbey, Burgundy. An international federation of monastic houses, all under the ultimate authority of Cluny’s abbot, develops subsequently.

  c.1127 Hugh of Saint-Victor writes the Didascalicon, a pioneering example of the medieval encyclopedia.

  c.1150 Emergence of coats of arms: heraldic devices are unique to the bearer and painted on the shield carried by a knight or lord.

  c.1200 The Gothic script has evolved: consistency of style and legibility promote standardized and reliable texts for teaching purposes.

  1204 The sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade: Europe’s cultural divide between Greeks and Latins becomes a chasm.

  1256 Thomas Aquinas starts to teach at the University of Paris.

  1300 Secular love poetry is being set to music in the form of the motet, and pastoral subjects are evoked in madrigals.

  * * *

  Christianity’s cultural influence on medieval European life and thought was continuous with its status in the civilization of late antiquity. Following Theodosius I’s adoption of Christianity as the empire’s official religion in 380 the clergy became aligned with the grades of the imperial civil service, and the religion was largely shorn of its earlier pacifist tendencies. Early medieval Christian culture built on this establishment status and was attuned to the pragmatic needs of warrior-kings who saw themselves as agents of a sacral and divine power. Many kings and aristocrats were converted by their wives. Queen Clotilda (c.474–c.545), the Burgundian and Catholic wife of Clovis, persuaded him to abandon the ancestral paganism of the Franks. The Bavarian princess Theodelinda (c.570–628), who married Agilulf, king of the Lombards, influenced his decision to abandon Arian Christianity in favor of Catholicism. The warrior ethic of previously pagan leaders acquired thereby a new focus, and the Church sanctioned the authority of Christian kings whose campaigns of conquest waged against hostile neighbors and dissidents led to new, and mostly enforced, conversions. Some of the monarchies, especially those of the Franks and of the Spanish Visigoths, adapted ancient Jewish rituals on the basis of a reading of the Old Testament. Kings were anointed liturgically with holy oil and reminded in sermons, prayers and Church councils of their responsibilities to God, who had chosen them to rule. The new culture of kingship was a potent mixture of public power and spiritual self-confidence. Underpinned by successful generalship, it spread to regions of Europe that had never been ruled by Rome, such as Ireland, northern Britain and areas to the east of the River Rhine.

  EVANGELIZING EUROPE

  Irish missionaries were especially active in converting Europe’s non-Roman peoples and Columbanus (c.543�
��615), the most celebrated evangelist, also founded new communities in Luxeuil in Burgundy and Bobbio in north Italy. The spread in Europe of the penitential practice of confession made individually to a priest—a distinctive feature of Celtic Christianity—owed much to Columbanus’s pioneering example. Within the island of Britain earlier forms of Celtic Christianity clashed with the more hierarchical Roman form until the Synod of Whitby (664), when Roman Christianity’s regulations were adopted for the kingdom of Northumbria with the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms falling into line subsequently. It was therefore a very Romanized English Church structure that produced its greatest missionary in Boniface (c.675–754), who became archbishop of Mainz and spent most of his career evangelizing on the borders of the kingdom of the Franks.

  The “secular clergy” served the needs of the laity through the parish-based system, while monks and religious women lived in communities set apart from the world. Monasticism’s earliest exponents were ascetics who had withdrawn to the deserts of Egypt and Syria, and the transmission of their influence to Western Europe, especially by the monk and traveler John Cassian (360–435), was a rare example of how the earlier communication networks across the Mediterranean could still operate in late antiquity. The rules prescribed for the monastic life varied, but the most influential were composed by Benedict of Nursia (c.480–c.547), who structured the day into periods of prayer, contemplation and work. The Order that followed his rule was named after him and the Benedictine elevation of manual labor in God’s service marked a real shift in cultural attitudes, since the élites of classical antiquity had long since scorned such work as a sign of servility. Great monasteries such as the one at Cluny in Burgundy enjoyed a close association with the secular nobility, who endowed them with lands. The Cistercians, an Order of reformed Benedictines, were particularly active in cultivating and developing Europe’s marginal lands during the 12th century. Monks constituted a disciplined, self-reliant, and unpaid labor force which could therefore develop farming practices in an innovative way and without having to rely on manorial customs.