Chivalry cult of death

In the ninth century the armoured knight on horseback represented the ultimate weapon. There was no known instrument of war that could better it. The Goths had adapted the stirrup to lethal effect. With better balance and surer seat the horseman could wear armour, carry a more substantial shield and his lance could be used as a battering ram, it no longer needed to be thrown. The impact of the knight became the key factor on the field of battle. The man who could afford a horse and the equipment that went with it became a key figure in the community. His horse subdued emenies and distance. He could travel, see things, meet people and have experiences about which the earthbound villager could only fantasise. Membership of this social elite was not a matter of refinement but of brute force.

Land was the primary necessity in the world of the mounted warrior. A knight needed at least enough land to sustain one horse. It was this basic military requirement which shaped European landholding between the eighth and forteenth centuries into the pattern subsequently known as the feudal system. The essence of the system was the exchange of land for arms. The value of any particluar land was represented by the number of knights it could support. When a knight died his land reverted to his feudal overlord. The feudal system allowed for land to be held for one lifetime. The knights who accompanied the Emperor Charles the Bald on his expedition to Italy in 877, required him to promise that he would pass their land to their sons if they died.

In the eleventh century the word knight meant simply a well equipped soldier on horseback. Traditional feudal knights do not appear to have concerned themselves greatly with the morality of what they were doing. Their job was often a nasty one and they usually executed it in a nasty fashion. One knight was described as much given to his belly and had many bastard children. By the end of the thirteenth century being a knight meant being a member of an hereditary elite whose seperate identity was jealously guarded.

A new and frightening weapon had a devastating effect on the mounted warrior. The crossbow was so lethal that in 1139 a church council denounced it as an inhuman instrument. A crossbow dart could pierce chain mail and the long bow developed with similiar firepower. The knightly response was sheet metal beaten into an articulated suit of armour. But the heavily armoured knight greatly decreased the flexibility of cavalry on the battlefield. Unhorsed and flat on his back the knight was a pathetic and ludicrous figure. The advent of gunpowder completed the obsolescence of the knight. Brass cannon were being cast in Florence in 1324. The English army used them for the first time at the balttle of Crecy in 1346. Firearms like the crossbow required full time trained operators. This lead to the emergence of the mercenary fighter. Popes raised mercenary armies as a matter of course from the beginning of the thirteenth century. Oaths of feudal loyalty remained the theoretical framework of society. But warfare was no longer a matter of fields to pasture knights horses, it was a matter of purchasing power.

During the twelth century, traditional songs and tales of ancient heros were reshaped into the "chanson de geste". Their purpose went beyond entertainment to articulate and glorify a code of knightly behaviour. The song of Roland, the song of the Cid, the song of the Niebelungs and Morte Athure, all looked back to a simple world uncorrupted by money. They paid little heed to historical authenticity, clothing their Dark Ages heros in medieval doublet and hose. In an era when the knight was becoming militarily obsolete, they were a structured an self conscious response, like the ceremonies of knightly initiation which also developed during the twelth century. This code of knightly conduct was called Chivalry, a name which made explicit the importance that its practitioners attached to the horse and rider. (from the french - chevelier. a man on a horse) In the High Middle Ages the average noble dynasty in England lasted no more that three generations, largely falling prey to battle field mortality. The cult of chivalry was also a cult of death.

Knighthood, Chivalry & Tournaments

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