The Pennsylvania State University Schreyer Honors College
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THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY SCHREYER HONORS COLLEGE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY THE SECULAR, RELIGIOUS, AND COURTLY DEVELOPMENT OF MEDIEVAL CHIVALRY KYLE GLENN CUNNINGHAM SUMMER 2015 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a baccalaureate degree in History with honors in History Reviewed and approved* by the following: Kathryn Salzer Assistant Professor of History Thesis Supervisor Michael Milligan Director of Undergraduate Studies Senior Lecturer in History Honors Adviser * Signatures are on file in the Schreyer Honors College. i ABSTRACT Few images in history are as provocative as the knight in shining armor, and few concepts of medieval knighthood are as romanticized as chivalry, the code-of-conduct that all knights were supposed to follow. The concept of chivalry emerged alongside medieval knighthood in the decades around 1000 C.E., with the express purpose of portraying knights as the elite, mounted fighting-force of Western Europe. By 1100, Christian ecclesiastics had appropriated the militaristic qualities of chivalry in order to promote religious warfare in the form of the crusades, transforming the knight into a holy warrior. At the same time, the idea of courtly love, which promoted the wooing of noble maidens as the ultimate goal of knighthood, emerged in southern France. My thesis will explore this emergence and development of chivalry by looking at these three different aspects—secular/militaristic, religious, and courtly— specifically from the point of view of medieval chivalric texts, including the Arthurian romances of Chrétien de Troyes, heroic texts like The Song of Roland, and religious documents like St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s exhortation of the Knights Templar. Through this literary analysis, supported by relevant medieval letters and documents, I hope to show that the concept of chivalry is more complicated than the knight simply riding out to save the damsel in distress. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures ....................................................................................................................................iii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................iv Introduction: What is Chivalry?.........................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: “For his lord a vassal must suffer hardships”: Militaristic and Secular Chivalry ............15 Chapter 2: “It is the will of God!”: Religious Chivalry and the Warrior-Monk ................................46 Chapter 3: “Let Love do with me what he will”: Courtly Love and Chivalric Romance..................77 Conclusion: The End of Chivalry? ....................................................................................................115 Appendix A: “The Skylark” by Bernart de Ventadorn ......................................................................122 Appendix B: The Rules of Love by Andreas Capellanus ...................................................................124 Appendix C: Be•m degra de chanter tener / It Would Be Best If I Refrained from Singing by Guirant Riquier ......................................................................................................................125 Bibliography ......................................................................................................................................127 iii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Second-to-third-century graffiti of a mounted clibanarius at Duro-Europos in modern- day Syria ............................................................................................................................................44 Figure 2: Sections of the Bayeux Tapestry detailing the Norman conquest of England. Note the couched lance as the Norman cavalry charges the English shield wall .............................................44 Figure 3: Norman cavalry charge. Note the use of stirrups attached to the saddles .........................44 Figure 4: Illustration of the Nine Worthies in no particular order ....................................................45 Figure 5: The archangel Michael, dressed as a twelfth-century knight, combats the devil on the façade of the church of Anzy-le-Duc in Burgundy ............................................................................75 Figure 6: A knight preparing to leave on crusade posing in an act of homage ................................75 Figure 7: Angels carry Roland’s soul into heaven ............................................................................76 Figure 8: Manuscript illumination depicting Lancelot and Guinevere speaking privately as a friend stands guard .............................................................................................................................112 Figure 9: Illustration of a musician (left) and juggler (right) performing ........................................... 112 Figure 10: Map of the medieval county of Champagne ...................................................................113 Figure 11: Map of European trade routes. Note the location of the Fairs of Champagne in northeast France .................................................................................................................................113 Figure 12: A noble lady arms her knightly lover in preparation for a joust .....................................114 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to begin by giving thanks to Dr. Thomas Lawrence, a Lecturer in History at the Pennsylvania State University. His class “History of Medieval Europe” helped me to foster an interest in the Middle Ages, and my primary source analysis on St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s In Praise of the New Knighthood, which features prominently in the chapters below, was invaluable in choosing knightly chivalry as the topic of this thesis. On that note, I would also like to thank Dr. Benjamin Hudson, a Professor of History and Medieval Studies at Penn State, for helping me narrow down the focus of my thesis during my junior year and for being a secondary reader. My greatest thanks go to Dr. Kathryn Salzer and Dr. Michael Milligan, Assistant Professor of History and Senior Lecturer in History and my Thesis and Honors Advisors respectively. This thesis would not have been possible without their tireless efforts to provide me with good instruction and guidance. Dr. Salzer’s class “Intellectual History of the Middle Ages” further helped me with organizing my thesis, as well as provided me with a wealth of sources to use throughout. Overall, both Dr. Salzer and Dr. Milligan’s patient commentaries have been invaluable in making this thesis a genuine source of medieval scholarship. 1 Introduction What is Chivalry? Sir Morien faces a conundrum. He is a young knight, most likely not even an adult by twenty-first-century standards, and he is far away from home. Sir Morien, as his name suggests, is a Moor from North Africa. He is identified by the dark color of his skin as an oddity, making him an outsider in European lands. However, he is also a knight, trained in mounted combat by his father, Sir Agloval, the brother of the famous Sir Perceval of Arthurian legend. It is Agloval who prompts Morien to begin his quest, for Agloval had left Morien and his mother in his own quest to find the Holy Grail. Morien has therefore been disinherited, and he seeks to find his father in order to restore his family’s honor. To achieve this, he has sworn to fight any other knight he comes across in order to question them on the whereabouts of his father. It is during this aggressive quest for the truth that Morien comes across Sir Gawain and Sir Lancelot, the two greatest knights in Arthur’s kingdom and all of Christendom. After fighting Lancelot to a draw, Morien relays his tale to the two knights. They are moved to tears by his plight and agree to let him travel with them, for they are out searching for Perceval, and there is a good chance they will encounter Agloval on their journey. But before they set out, Gawain and Lancelot lecture Morien on his belligerent behavior. In place of Morien’s previous attitude, they advise the young knight to uphold the following rules: to greet courteous knights in kind, to overcome violent knights in honest combat, to uphold the honor of all women, to be kind to all gentle-natured individuals, and to pursue justice against the wicked. By default, humility and 2 piety to God is also a requirement. Gawain and Lancelot’s advice represents the code of conduct that all good knights were expected to follow, and this code, known collectively as chivalry, would come to take many different forms.1 Few images are as provocative as the mounted knight riding into battle to fight the evil beast or rescue the “damsel in distress”. Indeed, the adventures of noble knights have captivated audiences from the Middle Ages into the Modern Era. Morien is just one example in a long line of romances that glorify the activities of knights. In the context of the Middle Ages it is a rather late piece of chivalric literature. The romance itself, dated to around 1400 C.E., is preserved in medieval Dutch and is very likely based off of a lost French original. Its characters and themes clearly show that it is written in homage to previous Arthurian romances like those of the famous Chrétien de Troyes, who introduced the character of Lancelot into the Arthurian corpus and was the primary contributor to its revitalization. The focus on