Comparative Civilizations Review Volume 26 Number 26 Spring 1992 Article 4 4-1-1992 European Chivalry in the 1490s Jennifer R. Goodman Texas A&M University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/ccr Recommended Citation Goodman, Jennifer R. (1992) "European Chivalry in the 1490s," Comparative Civilizations Review: Vol. 26 : No. 26 , Article 4. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/ccr/vol26/iss26/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Comparative Civilizations Review by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact
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[email protected]. Goodman: European Chivalry in the 1490s EUROPEAN CHIVALRY IN THE 1490S JENNIFER R. GOODMAN This paper calls to remembrance an older world of the 1490s, one not often revisted by students of the Age of Discovery. This excursion offers a new path towards the better understanding of the Europeans of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries through the reexamination of the international chivalric culture of christian Europe. In the case of chivalry, pejorative judgement has distracted us from a striking process of creative adaptation. This paper's first goal is to give some idea of the atmosphere of the decade, of the pervasiveness of this chivalric element. Chiv- alry functioned as a medium for international understanding and communication, a common social, cultural, political, and even re- ligious language. It also provided an arena of competition be- tween individuals and groups. This study stresses the interna- tional character of this literature, and of this European chivalric ideology, with, of course, important national variations.