Osprey - General Military - Knight - The Warrior and ... - Brego-weard

164
KNIGHT
The influence of these tales is further demonstrated by the Arthurian themes that
were adopted for the high and late medieval pageants and tournaments, not to
mention their role within the establishment of the Order of the Garter and other
secular knightly orders.
Chroniclers' tales of chivalric behaviour undoubtedly worked in a similar way, but
perhaps with a more overtly didactic purpose. Orderic's tale of the mednie Hellequin,
for example, might be presented as reportage, recording a miraculous event from his
local area, but the fact that it was a knight who stopped to warn Walchelin to change
his ways and provided the details of the knights' torments, is no coincidence: Orderic
had his audience in mind here. The secular chronicler such as Froissart, whose
purpose in writing his chronicles was 'that the honourable enterprises, noble
adventures, and deeds of arms, performed in the wars between England and France,
may be properly related, and held in perpetual remembrance — to the end that brave
men taking example from them may be encouraged in their well-doing', offered up
tales of individuals whose behaviour could be aspired to. These messages were largely
subliminal; the knightly audience would pick up on the positive and negative images
of chivalrous and unchivalrous acts in the course of the narrative without the
chronicler having to drive the point home.
Not at all subtle were the ecclesiastical writers who chose the vices of secular
knighthood as a subject for missives and homilies. Warnings and invective against
vainglory, pride and attacks on the defenceless and the property of the Church, and
exhortations to pursue a merciful and Christian chivalry were very common topics
directed at a knightly audience. Bernard of Clairvaux's exaltation of the Knights
Templar, In Praide of a New Knighthood, is the epitome of this kind of material; and is
addressed directly at the secular knight, in part to encourage him to join the ascetic and
holy Templars but also in order to chastise him for his sins.
As chivalry became more complex in the 14th century, and responding to a more
legalistic approach to matters of honour, the chivalric elite itself began to offer their
advice on chivalric matters. The Book of Chivalry of Geoffrey de Charny is very much
the advice of an experienced and chivalrous warrior to the aspirant or newly knighted
bachelor. Around the same time he also prepared a series of questions that raised some
of the more complex issues of chivalric behaviour on both the tournament field and
at war. For example, it asks whether, if a knight at tournament is knocked from his
horse because his saddle-girth fails, his opponent should win his horse. These appear
to have been prepared for his fellow members of the Order of the Star, founded by
Jean II of France in imitation of Edward Ill's Order of the Garter. One can imagine
these questions being asked around the table after one ot the Order's annual feasts,
Charny setting the questions and awaiting the answers of the assembled knights.