The Knight in History (39 page)

Ventadorn (Ventadour) castle of, 52

Verneuil, battle of, 175–176

vidas
(troubadour biographies), 48–49, 51–52, 53, 55, 61

Vogelweide, Walther von der, 70–71

Vulgate Cycle, 76–77, 79–80, 105

Wace, 74–75, 76

Wars of the Roses, 188–189, 192–194

Wavrin du Forestal, Jean, 167, 178–181

weapons, 9, 12–13, 15–16, 17, 30, 79, 88, 105, 123, 146, 157

White, Lynn, Jr., 9

Wilhelm, James, 62–63

William I (the Conqueror), king of England, 13, 29, 31, 73, 99, 102

William II (Rufus), king of England, 31, 36

William IX, duke of Aquitaine,
see
Guillem VII

William of Malmesbury, 31, 55, 72–73

William of Tancarville, 85, 86, 87

William of Tyre, chronicler, 43

Worcester, William, 169, 175, 184, 192

Yarmouth, earl of,
see
Paston, Sir Robert

Acknowledgments

This book was researched at the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library of the University of Michigan, the Library of Congress, and the McKeldin Library of the University of Maryland.

Special thanks are due to David Herlihy of the history department of Harvard University, who read the manuscript and made valuable suggestions, and to my husband, Joseph Gies, who took photographs, contributed his editorial skills, and wrote the chapter on Bertrand du Guesclin. I am also grateful to Hallam Ashley for his help with local Norfolk history.

About the Author

Frances Carney Gies is the author of
Joan of Arc
and coauthor, with her husband Joseph Gies, of
Women in the Middle Ages, Life in a Medieval City
, and
Life in a Medieval Castle
.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Also by Frances Gies:

JOAN OF ARC
(1981)

In collaboration with Joseph Gies:

WOMEN IN THE MIDDLE AGES
(1978)

THE INGENIOUS YANKEES
(1976)

LIFE IN A MEDIEVAL CASTLE
(1974)

MERCHANTS AND MONEYMEN
(1972)

LEONARD OF PISA
(juvenile)
(1969)

LIFE IN A MEDIEVAL CITY
(1969)

Credits

Maps by Frank Ronan

Copyright

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint:

Excerpts from Geoffrey of Monmouth,
The History of the Kings of Britain
, translated by Lewis Thorpe (Penguin Classics, 1966). Copyright © Lewis Thorpe, 1966; and Joinville & Villehardouin:
Chronicles of the Crusades
, translated by Margaret R. B. Shaw (Penguin Classics, 1963). Copyright © M. R. B. Shaw, 1963. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.

Excerpt from
Personae
by Ezra Pound. Copyright 1926 by Ezra Pound; and from
Translations
by Ezra Pound. Copyright © 1963 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation and Faber and Faber Ltd.

Excerpt from
The Trial of the Templars
by Malcolm Barber. Reprinted by permission of Cambridge University Press.

Excerpt from
Arab Historians of the Crusades
by Francesco Gabrielli. Reprinted by permission of The University of California Press.

Excerpts from Wace and Layamon,
Arthurian Chronicles
, translated by Eugene Mason. Reprinted by permission of J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.

Excerpts from
The Poetry of Arnaut Daniel
, edited and translated by James Wilhelm and
The Poetry of William VII, Count of Poitiers, IX Duke of Aquitaine
, edited and translated by Gerald Bond. Reprinted by permission of Garland Publishing, Inc.

Excerpts from
The Tree of Battles of Honoré Bonet
, edited and translated by G. W. Coopland. Reprinted by permission of Liverpool University Press.

Excerpts from Raymond d’Aguilers’
Historia Francorum qui Ceperunt Iherusalem
, translated by John Hugh Hill and Laurita L. Hill. Reprinted by permission of the American Philosophical Society.

Excerpts from Cervantes,
Don Quixote
, translated by Walter Starkie. Reprinted by permission of Macmillan Ltd.

Excerpts from
Songs of the Troubadours
by Arnaut Daniel, translated by Anthony Bonner. Copyright © 1972 by Schocken Books, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Schocken Books Inc.

Excerpts from
Anonymi gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolymitanorum
, translated by Rosalind Hill. Copyright © 1962 by Clarendon Press. Reprinted by permission of the Clarendon Press.

Excerpts from Fulcher of Chartres,
Historia Hierosolymitana
, translated by Martha E. McGinty, and Dana C. Monro,
Urban and the Crusaders
, both printed in
The First Crusade: The Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres and other Source Materials
, edited by Edward Peters. Copyright © 1971 by the University of Pennsylvania Press. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Photographs not credited in the captions are from the author’s collection
.

THE KNIGHT IN HISTORY
. Copyright © 1984 by Frances Carney Gies. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

First P
ERENNIAL
L
IBRARY
edition published 1987.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gies, Frances.

The knight in history.

“Perennial Library.”

Bibliography: p.

Includes index.

1. Knights and knighthood—History. I. Title.

CR4509.G54 1987 929.7’1 84-47571

ISBN 0-06-091413-0 (pbk.)

EPub Edition © April 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-201665-2

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

About the Publisher

Australia

HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)

Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia

http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au

Canada

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900

Toronto, ON, M5R, 3L2, Canada

http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca

New Zealand

HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited

P.O. Box 1

Auckland, New Zealand

http://www.harpercollins.co.nz

United Kingdom

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

77-85 Fulham Palace Road

London, W6 8JB, UK

http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk

United States

HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

10 East 53rd Street

New York, NY 10022

http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com

1.
Although much has been written about particular aspects of knighthood, surprisingly few general studies have been done by modern writers. The most recent are: Maurice Keen,
Chivalry
, New Haven, Conn., 1984; Richard Barber,
The Knight and Chivalry
, London, 1970; Sidney Painter,
French Chivalry
, Ithaca, N.Y., 1957 (first published in 1940 by the Johns Hopkins Press). Leon Gautier’s
Chivalry
, published in French in 1884, was translated into English by D. C. Dunning, London, 1965.

1.
Michael Grant,
The Army of the Caesars
, London, 1974, pp. 21–22, 70–72, 93–94, 140–142; Grant,
The World of Rome
, New York, 1960, pp. 23, 39–40, 51, 52; Jérôme Carcopino,
Daily Life in Ancient Rome
, New Haven, Conn., 1970, pp. 60, 74–75.

2.
Surveys of theories about the emergence of the knight and its connection with the beginnings of feudalism and the rise of the medieval nobility include: Carl Stephenson, “The Origin and Significance of Feudalism,”
American Historical Review
46 (1941), pp. 788–801; Leopold Génicot, “Recent Research on the Medieval Nobility,” in
The Medieval Nobility
, ed. and trans. by Timothy Reuter, Amsterdam, 1978, pp. 17–35; E. Warlop,
The Flemish Nobility Before 1300
, trans. by J. B. Ross, 4 vols., Kortrijk, Belgium, 1975–1976, Vol. I, pp. 11–17; David Herlihy, ed.,
The History of Feudalism
, New York, 1970, pp. xxii–xxvii.

3.
Heinrich Brunner,
Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte
, second edition, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1906, 1928.

4.
Marc Bloch,
Feudal Society
, trans. by L. A. Manyon, 2 vols., Chicago, 1964, Vol. II, pp. 283–286, 290–291.

5.
Lynn White, Jr.,
Medieval Technology and Social Change
, Oxford, 1962, pp. 1–41.

6.
Georges Duby, “The Nobility in Medieval France,” in
The Chivalrous Society
, trans. by Cynthia Poston, Berkeley, Calif., 1977, pp. 94–109; Karl Schmid, “The Structure of the Nobility in the Earlier Middle Ages,” in Reuter,
The Medieval Nobility
, pp. 37–59; Franz Irsigler, “On the Aristocratic Character of Early Frankish Society,” in Reuter,
The Medieval Nobility
, pp. 105–124; Leopold Génicot, “La noblesse au moyen âge dans l’ancienne ‘Francie’: continuité, rupture ou évolution?”,
Comparative Studies in Society and History
5 (1962–1963), pp. 52–59; Joan Martindale, “The French Aristocracy in the Early Middle Ages: A Reappraisal,”
Past and Present
75 (1977), pp. 5–45; Constance B. Bouchard, “The Origins of the French Nobility: A Reassessment,”
American Historical Review
86, No. 3 (June 1981), pp. 501–532.

7.
D. H. Bullough, “Early Medieval Social Groupings: The Terminology of Kinship,”
Past and Present
45 (1969), pp. 16–18; Constance B. Bouchard, “The Structure of a Twelfth-Century French Family: The Lords of Seignelay,”
Viator
10 (1978), pp. 41–44; Martindale, “The French Aristocracy,” pp. 38–43.

8.
K. Leyser, “Maternal Kin in Early Medieval Germany: A Reply,”
Past and Present
49 (1970), p. 126. See also Bouchard, “Origins of the French Nobility,” p. 504.

9.
Herlihy,
History of Feudalism
, pp. 69–77; F. L. Ganshof,
Feudalism
, trans. by Philip Grierson, New York, 1961, pp. 3–12.

10.
Bernard S. Bachrach, “Military Organization in Aquitaine under the Early Carolingians,”
Speculum
49 (January 1974), pp. 1–33; Bachrach, “Charles Martel, Mounted Shock Combat, the Stirrup and Feudal Origins,”
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History
7 (1970), pp. 47–76; Bachrach,
Merovingian Military Organization 481–751
, Minneapolis, 1972, pp. 113–128; P. H. Sawyer, review of White,
Medieval Technology and Social Change, Past and Present
24 (1963), pp. 90–95.

11.
A. D. H. Bivar, “Cavalry Equipment and Tactics on the Euphrates Frontier,”
Dumbarton Oaks Papers
26 (1972), pp. 273–291; Bivar, “The Stirrup and Its Origins,”
Oriental Art
N.S., I (1955) pp. 61–65.

12.
David C. Douglas,
William the Conqueror
, Berkeley, Calif., 1967, p. 202.

13.
Georges Duby, “The Origins of Knighthood,” in
The Chivalrous Society
, p. 159.

14.
Sally Harvey, “The Knight and the Knight’s Fee in England,”
Past and Present
49 (1970), p. 15.

15.
Karl Bosl, “ ‘Noble Unfreedom.’ The Rise of the
Ministeriales
in Germany,” in Reuter,
The Medieval Nobility
, pp. 291–311; John B. Freed, “The Origins of the European Nobility: The Problem of the Ministerials,”
Viator
7 (1976), pp. 213–241.