Chivalry

Chivalry in the Middle Ages

The English word chivalry was derived directly from the French word chevalerie, meaning literally “exploits on horseback.” When French first became a written language (10th and 11th centuries), the connotations of this word were military: It emphasized the great difference in status between low-ranking members of the infantry and men from the nobility, who alone were trained to ride into battle on costly warhorses. In French texts from this early period, one already finds the superlative description of a few noble warriors as “flowers of chivalry,” a metaphor suggesting their fully developed embodiment of collective ideals: Those ideals were entirely military, however, having to do with how a mounted warrior interacted with men rather than with women.

Just as a man called a chevalier was being distinguished from a warrior who fought on foot, this term also distinguished him from other members of the nobility, those who had become priests or whose primary occupation was the governing of their families' ancestral lands. Landowners did go to war on horseback, but a man whose primary title was chevalier was likely to be a younger son from a noble family, someone who fought to defend his family's claim to a certain piece of land but who could not expect to inherit or govern that piece of land and thus whose access to wealth and power would always be limited. In a time when many legal matters were decided by combat or by a judge, rather than by written laws and contracts, ambitious younger sons could acquire their own territories by military conquest, especially if they could kidnap and/or marry by force a woman for whom such territories had been designated as a marriage dowry. During this period, therefore, apprehension arose about the tendency among some younger sons to leave their families' lands and move about the countryside alone or in bands of mounted warriors, seeking opportunities for such unauthorized plunder and for the social climbing that could result from it.

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