Volume 31, Number 19 · December 6, 1984
Parfit Gentil Knights
By R.C. Smail
Chivalry
by Maurice Keen
Yale University Press, 303 pp., $25.00
Chivalry is a word that nearly everyone knows and uses, but what does it mean? We associate it with a code of conduct that places help for others, especially for the weak, the helpless, and those in distress, before self-advantage. Yet this is not all. The word derives from the horse, le cheval, and from those who once fought on horseback, la chevalerie—not, however, from the cavalrymen of professional armies, but from the medieval chevalier, the knight, whose skill in mounted combat, whether displayed in the tournament or on the battlefield, not only distinguished him from those who fought on foot, but whose ability to provide his own expensive war-horse and armor, to say nothing of remounts and spares, meant that he came from the upper strata of society, where wealth and status depended mainly on estates in land. Such landed gentry took pride in their ancestry, came to exhibit that pride in heraldic display, and placed their personal and family honor among the things they valued most. Nor, during the Middle Ages, could religious considerations be excluded. We hear of aspirants to knighthood keeping night-long vigil over their arms in church, and receiving their sword from the altar.
Review, 2762 words
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