1) Religious scholar Heiko Oberman, for instance, argues that the Protestant Reformation had deep roots in Catholic attempts to revitalize the institutional Church beset by greed and spiritual malaise: Masters of the Reformation: The Emergence of a New Intellectual Climate in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1981). Likewise, historian Charles Trinkaus has shown that Renaissance humanism did not repudiate medieval religious society and government but built a new alliance between humanity and divinity that empowered individuals to fulfill their missions in religious and civil affairs. In Our Image and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought, 2 vols. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970). (Go back to the article.)

2) The best translation is available in The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, eds. Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John Herman Randall, Jr. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1948), pp. 223-54. (Go back to the article.)

3) Joseph R. Strayer On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), especially pp. 3-12 and 89-111. (Go back to the article.)

4) Howell Chickering and Thomas H. Seiler, eds. The Study of Chivalry: Resources and Approaches (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1988). A number of ideas for the present article grew from The Study of Chivalry; the present author acknowledges his great debt to its editors and authors.— Introductory sources for the European Middle Ages are George Holmes, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988) and Donald Matthew, Atlas of Medieval Europe (New York: Facts on File, 1983). Rich anthologies of primary sources are offered by John Revell Reinhard, ed., Medieval Pageant (London: Haskell House, 1970) and Patrick J. Geary, ed., Readings in Medieval History (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 1989). (Go back to the article.)

5) For more information on TEAMS materials, which are reasonably priced, contact the Consortium at Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 103 Walwood Hall, Kalamazoo, MI 49008. (Go back to the article.)

6) Trevor Cairns, Medieval Knights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Another general, chronological approach is offered by Frances Gies, The Knight in History (New York: Harper & Row, 1984). (Go back to the article.)

7) Bradford Broughton, Dictionary of Medieval Knighthood and Chivalry, vol. 1, Concepts and Terms (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1986) and vol. 2, People, Places and Events (1988). In general, see also Joseph R. Strayer, ed., Dictionary of the Middle Ages (New York: Scribner, 1982—). (Go back to the article.)

8) Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), is the recognized leader in scholarly work on the topic. A popular book, and therefore more readily accessible to the student reader, is offered by Richard W. Barber, The Knight and Chivalry (New York: Scribner, 1970); see especially his detailed introduction into the major components of chivalry. For a more academic resource and broader perspective, consult Georges Duby, Chivalrous Society, trans. Cynthia Postan (Berkeley: University of Calif. Press, 1977). (Go back to the article.)

9) Students should see Cairns, Medieval Knights, pp. 42-47. Teachers can consult Colin Morris, “Equestris Ordo: Chivalry as a Vocation in the Twelfth Century,” Studies in Church History 15 (1978), pp. 87-96. (Go back to the article.)

10) Ramon Lull, The Book of the Order of Chivalry, trans. William Caxton (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1926). Christine de Pisan, The Books of Fayttes of Arms and of Chivalry, trans. William Caxton, ed. A.T.P. Boyles (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1932). Note that teachers may have to retype their selections since these editions reprint Caxton’s 15th-century spelling and style. (Go back to the article.)

11) Although dated, Raymond Kilgour’s study offers a classic statement: The Decline of Chivalry as Shown in the French Literature of the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1937). A more recent and concise discussion is found in Arno Borst, “Knighthood in the High Middle Ages: Ideal and Reality,” in Lordship and Community in Medieval Europe, ed. Fredric L. Cheyette (Huntington, NY: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Co., 1975), pp. 180-91. (Go back to the article.)

12) Keen, The Laws of War in the Late Middle Ages (London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1965). (Go back to the article.)

13) See, for example, Diane Bornstein, Mirrors of Courtesy (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1975). (Go back to the article.)

14) For the Crusades, students should read Cairns, Medieval Knights, pp. 21-29. There are two good one-volume studies of the Crusades: Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A Short History (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1987) and Hans Eberhard Mayer, The Crusades, trans. John Gillingham (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1972). Students and teachers may also consult Jonathan Riley-Smith, Atlas of the Crusades (New York: Facts on File 1990), with illustrations, maps and comprehensive treatment of the Crusades’ many elements. An academic treatment of just war is found in Frederick H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1975). Because just war is a highly complex topic, however, the subject may be too ambitious for a brief unit on chivalry. (Go back to the article.)

15) John Keegan, The Face of Battle (New York: Viking, 1976), pp. 107-112. See also John Barnie, War in Medieval English Society: Social Values in the Hundred Years War 1337-99 (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1974), pp 58-75. (Go back to the article.)

16) Cairns provides good diagrams and illustrations of changes in armor and warfare throughout Medieval Knights. See also Lynn White, Jr., Medieval Technology and Society Change ( Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1962), pp. 14-28 and Keen, Chivalry, pp. 23-27. The use of the crossbow is discussed by Quentin Hughes, “Medieval Firepower,” Fortress 8 (1991), pp. 31-43. Keegan gives a complete military analysis of Agincourt in The Face of Battle, pp. 79-116. (Go back to the article.)

17) Malcolm Vale, “New Techniques and Old Ideals: Impact of Artillery on War and Chivalry at the End of the Hundred Years’ War,” in War, Literature and Politics in the Late Middle Ages, ed. C.T. Allmand (Liverpool: Liverpool Univ. Press, 1976), pp. 57-72. See also Vale, War and Chivalry: Warfare and Aristocratic Culture in England, France and Burgundy at the End of the Middle Ages (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1981). (Go back to the article.)

18) Conrad Cairns, Medieval Castles (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987) is a 48-pg., very comprehensible explanation full of illustrations and diagrams of castles, moats, drawbridges, battlements, even arrowslits. Another good volume, one with many illustrations, is Sheila Sancha, The Castle Story (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1979). A more comprehensive picture can be drawn from Joseph and Frances Gies, Life in a Medieval Castle (New York: Harper & Row, 1974). (Go back to the article.)

19) For tournaments, heralds and coats of arms, see Cairns, Medieval Knights, pp. 35-41. Juliet Vale addresses tournaments in a very thought-provoking way in Edward III and Chivalry: Chivalric Society and its Context, 1270-1350 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1982). A more general, richly illustrated approach is found in Richard Barber and Juliet Barker, Tournaments: Jousts, Chivalry and Pagents in the Middle Ages (New York: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1989). (Go back to the article.)

20) Cairns, Medieval Knights, pp. 53-60. (Go back to the article.)

21) For another representation of life in the Middle Ages, screen The Lion in Winter, with Peter O’Toole again playing Henry II, this time as an older but still taciturn king, and Katharine Hepburn as Eleanor of Aquitaine. (Go back to the article.)

22) Marueen Fries and Jeanie Watson, eds., Approaches to Teaching the Arthurian Tradition (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1992). Other volumes in the series relevant to the Middle Ages treat Dante’s Divine Comedy (Carole Slade, ed., 1982), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Miriam Youngerman Miller and Jane Chance, eds., 1986), medieval English drama (Richard K. Emmerson, ed., 1990), Beowulf (Jess B. Bessinger, Jr., and Robert F. Yeager, eds., 1984), and Canterbury Tales (Joseph Gibaldi, ed., 1980). (Go back to the article.)

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© 2003 Christopher Bellitto, Ph.D.