First published in 2005. This book, a collection of lectures delivered at King's College, London in 1925, is a brilliant tribute to the spirit of chivalry. Lectures on the historical context of chivalry, its origins, and its spread throughout Europe add important dimensions to the study and offer the reader insights into a moment of history which, though long passed, continues to excite the modern imagination.

First published in 2005. This book, a collection of lectures delivered at King's College, London in 1925, is a brilliant tribute to the spirit of chivalry. Lectures on the historical context of chivalry, its origins, and its spread throughout Europe add important dimensions to the study and offer the reader insights into a moment of history which, though long passed, continues to excite the modern imagination.

On the great influence of a valiant lord: "The companions, who see that good warriors are honored by the great lords for their prowess, become more determined to attain this level of prowess." On the lady who sees her knight honored: "All of this makes the noble lady rejoice greatly within herself at the fact that she has set her mind and heart on loving and helping to make such a good knight or good man-at-arms." On the worthiest amusements: "The best pastime of all is to be often in good company, far from unworthy men and from unworthy activities from which no good can come." Enter the real world of knights and their code of ethics and behavior. Read how an aspiring knight of the fourteenth century would conduct himself and learn what he would have needed to know when traveling, fighting, appearing in court, and engaging fellow knights. Composed at the height of the Hundred Years War by Geoffroi de Charny, one of the most respected knights of his age, A Knight's Own Book of Chivalry was designed as a guide for members of the Company of the Star, an order created by Jean II of France in 1352 to rival the English Order of the Garter. This is the most authentic and complete manual on the day-to-day life of the knight that has survived the centuries, and this edition contains a specially commissioned introduction from historian Richard W. Kaeuper that gives the history of both the book and its author, who, among his other achievements, was the original owner of the Shroud of Turin.

"Georges Duby in productivity and originality stands at the forefront of active medievalists in France and in the world. The present collection contains 15 of his short articles, most but not all of which appear in English for the first time. . . Of capital interest are his several essays that explore the evolution of nobility, knighthood, the noble family, and the ideals of chivalry across the central Middle Ages. They are both a summary and the point of departure of current research into the medieval aristocracy .... Indispensable."--Choice "[A] valuable collection. The title is exact. But it is no coffee-table account of courtly life eked out with colour photos of an author's subsidized holiday. It is an interlocking series of studies about the structure of families, the nature of knighthood and nobility, changes of attitudes towards kinship, and the influence of new clerical ideas . . . . Duby shows us noble families becoming specifically knightly, acquiring heritable toponymies, clustering round the patrimony, emphasizing the male line and the eldest born save when the female is an heiress, and in the course of time forming a homogeneous noble class whose members by St. Louis's age, whatever else they are, are gentilhommes. Passion is not spent, but canalized against the enemies of Christ. The discrete themes of undergraduate medieval history are in reality one complex whole: land, wives, dynasty war, celibacy, vows, pilgrimage, crusade, nobility."--Times Literary Supplement "Duby's researches in medieval agrarian and social history have established him as one of the leading international authorities in those areas. This volume brings together 15 of his most significant articles. The book represents the best of 'the new history."'--Library Journal

Popular views of medieval chivalry—knights in shining armor, fair ladies, banners fluttering from battlements—were inherited from the nineteenth-century Romantics. This is the first book to explore chivalry’s place within a wider history of medieval England, from the Norman Conquest to the aftermath of Henry VII’s triumph at Bosworth in the Wars of the Roses. Saul invites us to view the world of castles and cathedrals, tournaments and round tables, with fresh eyes. Chivalry in Medieval England charts the introduction of chivalry by the Normans, the rise of the knightly class as a social elite, the fusion of chivalry with kingship in the fourteenth century, and the influence of chivalry on literature, religion, and architecture. Richard the Lionheart and the Crusades, the Black Death and the Battle of Crecy, the Magna Carta and the cult of King Arthur—all emerge from the mists of time and legend in this vivid, authoritative account.

The History of Chivalry: Knighthood and Its Times is a two volume historical work by English historian Charles Mills. It is an account of the development of chivalry and knighthood in medieval Europe through the ages, with the reference to the merits and effects that they had on modern day warfare and military.

How did medieval society deal with private justice, with grudges, and with violent emotions? This ground-breaking reader collects for the first time a number of unpublished or difficult-to-find texts that address violence and emotion in the Middle Ages. The sources collected here illustrate the power and reach of the language of vengeance in medieval European society. They span the early, high, and later middle ages, and capture a range of perspectives including legal sources, learned commentaries, narratives, and documents of practice. Though social elites necessarily figure prominently in all medieval sources, sources concerning relatively low-status individuals and sources pertaining to women are included. The sources range from saints' lives that illustrate the idea of vengeance to later medieval court records concerning vengeful practices. A secondary goal of the collection is to illustrate the prominence of mechanisms for peacemaking in medieval European society. The introduction traces recent scholarly developments in the study of vengeance and discusses the significance of these concepts for medieval political and social history.