KNIGHTHOOD AND CHIVALRY
MEDIEVAL
The traditions of knighthood and chivalry grew out of medieval warfare. The elite of the fighting troops were the mounted warriors and the word chivalry comes from the French word for horse, cheval. The name for this warrior in every European language except English means horseman: chevalier (French), cavaliere (Italian), caballero (Spanish) and Ritter (German). However, knight comes from the Old English cnicht, or servant, reflecting his role as the servant of his lord rather than the animal he rode. Indeed, in early times all such men were a type of servant to a lord, bound by pledges of loyalty. They mounted knights were the tanks of the time. Both men and horses were heavily armored and their armor and other equipment was expensive. Thus, most were from wealthy families. In addition, when chain mail was replaced by heavy plate armor, a knight needed to have several very strong horses to bear the weight.

Most were younger sons. Since they could not inherit their family estates, they were forced to find an honorable profession, and other than the clergy, there were few options but knighthood. A young boy was sent to the household of another lord as a page. There he learned to read and write and basic calculating, and he developed his strength with physical exercise. He also learned how to behave at court. In his early teens he would become the squire to a knight, serving him and caring for his horses and equipment, even cleaning the stables. Eventually he accompanied his knight in warfare.

At about twenty the squire could become a knight himself. The ceremonies varied but, unless awarded on a battled field for special valor, included a bath, fasting, an all night vigil, and confession of sins. Then he was dubbed by the lord, usually in front of the whole court. He pledged to defend the weak, give mercy to a defeated enemy and be loyal to his lord and king. Then, for about twenty years, he lived on the spoils of war and his lord's largess.

RENAISSANCE
With the advent of guns and cannon, the medieval knight became obsolete. Tournaments and jousts became entertainment at festivals and a way to please the ladies. With no land of his own to manage, the knight could devote times of peace to leisure, poetry and music, tournaments and falconry, and the ladies. For a landless knight with no other income, a marriage in which he could continue the life style befitting his rank was difficult. Courtly Love was the only alternative. The Code of Chivalry consisted of: duties to countrymen (serve the lord), duties to God (protect the innocent) and duties to women (including Courtly Love). Soon the emphasis of the knight's service was to his lady rather than to his lord. He carried a token of this lady such as a scarf or ribbon into a joust. This was Don Quixote's code and the reason he wanted such a token from his Dulcinea.

Even kings such as Henry VIII of England took part in tournaments. Henry II of France (the father of Elizabeth of Valois, Philip II's third wife) was killed during a joust in Paris. Soon after, a joust was one of the entertainments during the wedding festivities for Elizabeth and Philip.

KNIGHTHOOD TODAY
Knighthood continues to exist today although it is usually purely honorary. In the British Commonwealth, a knighthood is a form of gentility but is not nobility and cannot be inherited. The title of Dame is the equivalent for a woman.

CHIVALRIC LITERATURE
LEGENDS AND EARLY POETRY
The genre Cervantes parodied in Don Quixote had its origins in the earlier literature of knights and their deeds and these in turn had roots in history. Two of the earliest threads were the Matter of Britain (Arthur and his Knights) and the Matter of France (Charlemagne and Roland). In Spain there was the Cantar del mio Cid, and there were also early Germanic and Swedish tales.

Best known to English speakers are the stories of King Arthur and his knights. New versions continue to be written and widely read today. Since they formed the basis for most of the later stories of chivalry, they deserve a discussion here. There was a real Celtic hero who fought against the Saxon invaders of Britain, probably about the fifth century AD. He is mentioned in the earliest histories, of among others Gildas (about 540), Nennius (eighth century) and Geoffrey of Monmouth (about 1136). (He is referred to as a dux bellorum — leader in war — rather than a king.) In later years Arthur came to be known as the last emperor of Britain, but his power soon crumbled, a fact paralleled in the tales. The name Arthur comes from the Roman Artorius but was not known in Britain until the sixth century. In the years after his reputed death, half a dozen rulers gave their children the name of Arthur; then it was not used again until the time of Geoffrey of Monmouth who actually traced Arthur's lineage, through ninety-one ancestors back to Brutus! (Among them were Cymbeline and King Lear, both of whom are depicted in plays by Shakespeare.) Many places have been identified as places where Arthur might have lived. He is especially identified with Glastonbury England, where one legend placed the Holy Grail, and where his grave was supposedly found by King Henry II. It can still be seen.

'Arthur' would have been brought up and educated during the very end of Roman influence in Britain. He was probably a nominal Christian and bilingual in Latin and the British language. He would have lived in a wooden or a wattle and daub house, not a stone castle. There would have been no knights in shining armor. While men might have ridden horses, the stirrup had not yet reached western Europe, so a true cavalry would not have been possible. There certainly could not have been any jousts on horseback.

Most of the tales of Arthur and his knights we know today actually came from France. At the time, Britain consisted not only what are now the British Isles, but also the northwest section of France still named Brittany. The French soon adopted Arthur as their own. Chrétien de Troyes, a French poet of the twelfth century wrote stories about Guinevere, Lancelot, Gawain, Gereint, Tristan and Iseult, Percival and the others. Others wrote tales with new characters including Sir Galahad and his quest for the Holy Grail. These characters soon spread throughout the literature of Europe and appeared in many of the books of chivalric romance so criticized later.

The English Sir Thomas Malory (1405-1471) gathered all the Arthurian stories together in the 1485 Le Morte d'Arthur. This formed the basis of the later works on Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, including those still being written today.

In Chansons de Geste (Songs of Deeds) French authors wrote of their own heroes, most prominently of the historic Roland and his exploits. In 778, the Emperor Charlemagne led an expedition against the Saracens in Spain, conquering several cities before recrossing the Pyrenees on his way back to France. Most of his army got through the pass of Roncesvalles successfully, but the rear guard was ambushed and annihilated. One of those slain was a certain Roland. That much is history. The story of Roland and his defeat became the stuff of many legends. These were recorded at the end of the eleventh-century in the old French epic La Chanson de Roland. In it Roland is the governor of the March (Frontier) of Breton and the nephew of Charlemagne. The battle described in the Chanson is fiction, but his story spread throughout Europe and became intertwined with the legends of King Arthur and the Holy Grail. Roland became the perfect knight, totally loyal to his sovereign. The stories were pulled together by the Italian Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533) in Orlando furioso with its famous opening: "I sing of knights and ladies, of love and arms, of chivalry, of courageous deeds". (It also introduced the hippogriff best known to present day readers from the Harry Potter books.)

The Spanish equivalent was the Cantar de Gesta exemplified by the Cantar del Mio Cid a poem first written about 1140, although the earliest surviving copy dates from 1307. It is the story of the start of the Reconquest (of Spain from the Moors) which took place from 718-1494. It is an idealized history of Roderigo (Ruy) Diaz de Vivar or El Cid or El Campeador (1044-1099), the national hero of Spain. There is no magic, but it is not completely truthful. The 1961 film starring Charlton Heston tells his story, and there is a statue of him in San Diego's Balboa Park.

CHIVALRIC ROMANCES
The books described above are still admired, are readily available and widely read today. None of them were among those condemned to the flames in the auto-da-fé of the books in Don Quixote. But the advent of printing ushered in a new era in chivalric literature. Many more copies could be made available and a wider audience reached, both among the literate and illiterate. Moreover they could appear in native languages and created to appeal to "everyman". The result was a glut of second (or third) rate stories, especially in Spain, which were ridiculed by most intellectuals. The chivalric romance was born. The new Iberian (Spanish and Portuguese) fiction included monsters, wizards and other wonders. The hero was human, but the stories were mythological, and the ordinary laws of nature were suspended. The uneducated could read or hear them and then believe every word of these so-called ‘histories'.

However, there were some which rose above that level. Two of these most frequently cited by Don Quixote himself were Amadís of Gaul (1508) and Palmerin of England (1547-1548). Both were judged worthy to be saved by the priest and the barber.

Amadís of Gaul
The material goes way back, and some claim a Portuguese origin. The most complete retelling of the story was by Garcia Rodríguez Montalvo in 1508. (i.e. during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella) Without it we would not have Don Quixote. We know almost nothing about the author, neither the date of his birth nor of his death, but he certainly was living between 1450 and 1500. In his lifetime chivalry still played a large part in Spanish life including challenges among knights.

Montalvo's original work consists of four books with 132 chapters and has almost 300 characters. There is the interweaving of a number of plots typical of medieval romances. The first three books contained earlier material, but book 4 was mostly Montalvo's invention. In a typical convention of the time, he claimed book 4 and another later work were "discovered" in a tomb near Constantinople, brought to Spain by a Hungarian merchant, and translated by him. Amadís is chiefly about love and chivalric combat in a world under influence of magic and enchantment. Knighthood is exalted and monarchy and the Church shown to be the cornerstones of society.

Set in real places as well as imaginary ones, it supposedly opens shortly after death of Christ when Amadís was born. However, most takes place in a more medieval seeming Europe, mostly in Britain, but Amadís travels over much of the known world. It has an evil magician, a docile lion, a dwarf, giants (one of whom is descended from contemporaries of King Arthur). There is a sword wedged between two doors which only the true heir can retrieve. The main characters are Amadís, his wife Oriana and, later, their son Esplandián. A sequel tells of the mythical island of California (the first known use of this spelling), west of the Indies and "... very close to the side of the Terrestial Paradis; and it is peopled by black women without any men". This so intrigued Cortés that he commissioned the 1539 expedition of Francisco de Ulloa which determined the island was, in fact, a peninsula, now Baja California. However, it was not corrected on many maps until the eighteenth century.

Amadís was soon printed all over Europe and was among the earliest reading of many students including Cervantes.

The Palmerin Romances
Appearing about the same time as Amadís, the first Palmerin book was attributed to an anonymous lady of Augustobriga but may have been by Francisco Vasquez de Ciudad Rodrigo. Palmerin de Oliva, Seville 1525, was a success second only to Amadís. The action ranged over much of known geography: Hungary, Macedonia, Germany, England, et cetera. It had fairies and people turned into animals. It was condemned to the fire by the curate in Don Quixote.

In its successor and sequel, Palmerin of England (first Spanish edition in two parts, 1547 & 1548), most of the action takes place on the ‘perilous isle' of Britain. This Palmerin is the grandson of a King of England and Palmerin de Oliva. In Don Quixote it was judged worthy, not only to be saved but to have a special case prepared for it. "It is a good book and was written by a ‘wise king of Portugal'". The priest says it and Amadís are only books in the library worthy of being saved.

Contemporary with the chivalric romances were the pastoral novels. They are judged severely in Don Quixote. His niece wants one destroyed because, if they do manage to cure Don Quixote of being a knight, he might take it into his head to become a shepherd. In fact that is exactly what he decides to do at the end of Part II, but he dies before he can. Ten books of Fortune of Love (1573), a pastoral novel mentioned in Don Quixote, has shepherds called Dulcineo and Dulcina which may have inspired Cervantes. The priest was delighted to find it and kept it for himself.

The popularity of all the chivalric romances was considered a grave social and moral problem, especially in their effect on young people and women, and by the beginning of the seventeenth century they were no longer fashionable. Cervantes sounded their death knell, yet Don Quixote is a very affectionate burlesque compared to the harsh criticism of many. He attacks what had become of chivalry rather than chivalry himself.

THE ROMANTIC PERIOD AND LATER
In a revolt against The Enlightenment, the eighteenth century saw the growth of romanticism and its own versions of the old stories. The heroes were of a different kind, with an emphasis on nature; there were no mythological creatures. The writers included Sir Walter Scott (e.g. Ivanhoe) William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, Washington Irving, and James Fenimore Cooper.* Two of the most important in the field were Alfred Tennyson with The Idylls of the King which retold the stories of Arthur and his court, and Richard Wagner with his operas Parsifal, Tristan und Isolde and Lohengrin.

Modern examples abound, especially Arthurian novels including The Once and Future King by T.H. White, and those of Marion Zimmer Bradley, Nokolai Tolstoy and Stephen R. Lawless. These authors try to make them fit the true historic setting in which the characters existed. There are also the more imaginative novels such as those of Katherine Kurtz. Finally, more distant offsprings are the books by J.K. Rowling, especially Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Harry is truly a modern knight and even thinks of himself as on a quest, this time to destroy the Deathly Hallows. He says: "You've got to find out about them yourself! It's a Quest!" (Hallows means Holies so they are the opposite of the Holy Grail, the goal of the quests of the earlier knights.) Harry rights wrongs, rescues fair maidens, and destroys evil-doers. His armor is his cloak of invisibility, his steeds are a broomstick and a hippogriff, and his mounted jousts are Quidditch games.

* While usually thought of as a cup, the Holy Grail of literature took many other forms as well, such as a platter or a stone. It always had food- and life-giving properties. Among modern seekers are Indiana Jones and Monty Python.

** As a boy, James Fenimore Cooper was a great admirer of books such as the chivalric romance Don Belianus of Greece, and he determined to write one himself with "knights and squires, and horses, and ladies, and castles and banners". (Don Belianus was one of the books criticized by Don Quixote's priest but was condemned to exile in the barber's house rather than to burning.)

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Revised September 2007
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