Summary
Early on, a friend of the podcast asked if we were going to cover chivalry. Because really, when you think of the Middle Ages, this is it, right? Knights in very shiny armor on beautiful horses charging into battle, swords drawn! Knights getting scarves from their ladies! Knights holding vigils and praying in front of the holy grail. Today, three years later, Em and Jesse are finally going to get down to brass tacks on the topic. Who wrote the book on chivalry and what did it say? Did people ever really behave like this, or was it an unreachable ideal? And, of course, Chaucer forever. Join us, won’t you?
Notes
1/ Colin Firth rescuing a woman from a nondescript office job…Bridget Jones?? [Lol!]
2/ Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_White_and_the_Huntsman
3/ England Before 1066: see episodes 53, 54, and 56.
4/ Maurice Keen Chivalry
Richard Kaeuper Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe
5/ Crusades: We haven’t really covered these yet! We should do that. But we discuss the infamous Albigensian Crusade in Episode 48 (see note 27).
6/ Macbeth “unseam’d him from the nave to the chops, / And fix’d his head upon our battlements” (I.ii.22–23)
Henry V The opening of IV.vii discusses the slaughter of the boys watching the supplies.
7/ John Hawkwood (1323–1394) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hawkwood
Terry Jones, Chaucer’s Knight.
8/ Andrzej Tadeusz Bonaventura Bciuszko. Sorry. https://www.nps.gov/thko/learn/historyculture/kosciuszkobio.htm
9/ Baron von Steuben (1730–1794)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Wilhelm_von_Steuben
10/ Known to every Illinois schoolchild, Kasimir Pulaski (1745–1779).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_Pulaski
11/ Hundred Years War (1337–1453) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Years%27_War
Battle of Crecy (1346) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Crécy
Battle of Agincourt (1415) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt
12/ Sir Geoffrey Luttrell being helped by his wife and daughter-in-law (image from the Luttrell Psalter, mid-14th-century British Library MS Additional 42130 folio 202v)
13/ Chrétien de Troyes (flourished 1160–1191)
14/ Against the King’s Peace: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_(law)
15/ The Three Estates (those who pray [clergy], those who work [peasants], those who fight [knights/nobility]) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estates_of_the_realm
16/ Étienne de Fougères (d. 1178) writes a Livre des Manières about knights and chivalry. French wikipedia site: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Étienne_de_Fougères
17/ Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_of_Clairvaux
18/ Ordene de chevalerie anonymous Old French poem c1220.
The poem is about Prince Hugh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_II_of_Saint-Omer
19/ Saladin (1137–1193) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saladin
20/ Quote from the Ordene de chevalerie is from Keen’s Chivalry p. 7
21/ Please instead insert King Charles into this joke.
22/ Carpet considerations.
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