April 25, 2023 • 26 mins
Chris dives into some of the most popular topics from this era, including the rules of engagement for knights, the castle-building economy, chivalry, and the legend of King Arthur.
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
Lessons from the world's top professors.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Anytime, any place, world history examined and science explained.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
This is one day university. Welcome. We're back with.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Another episode of half hour history Secrets of the Medieval World.
I'm your host, Mike Coscarelli. Last episode, we've talked about
the intellectual Renaissance and a challenge to the Church. Now
it's time for knights, armor, rules of engagement and chivalry.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
It's all here. Here's Chris.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
So we've just spent a little time talking about the
twelfth century Renaissance and this upsurge of spirituality, which had
some negative connotations when the Church began to be repressive
toward heresy. And even though we said that that kind
of repression feeds into the caricature of a dark ages,
wiping all that aside, you can't deny that at about
(01:25):
ten fifty eleven hundred, there's this flowering this high medieval period,
as if, as if medieval Europe began to wake up
from a long nap since the Carolingian Renaissance had collapsed
at about eight fifty, and an important part of that.
In fact, one of the first things people think about
when they study medieval history or where they think about
the Middle Ages are knights, knights in shining armor. Little
(01:48):
boys and little girls like to play those stories, like
to hear the stories of the Arthurian romances, like to
go to museums and see the suits of armor. Maybe
they've been to a Renaissance fair, which usually looks more
like a medieval fair, but somehow the Renaissance fair makes
it sound brighter and better, and so people enjoy these
stories of jousting and tournaments and things like that. So
(02:10):
let's focus for a few minutes on knighthood. Let's see
where they lived in castles, and then let's take a
step back and look at this code called chivalry and
try to look at it in theory and then in
practice as well.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
So let's begin with knighthood.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
The very beginning of knighthood reaches back to the Middle Ages.
And there's a particular word very early in the Middle
Ages called melez, and that actually goes back even further
to the Roman word for soldier, a melez.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
It would be.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Milites in another form of Latin, from which we get
the word military. Now, the Roman soldier was by and
large an infantryman, a foot soldier. We do have examples
of mounted soldiers, say with Alexander the Great around three
point thirty BC or BCE. That was one of Alexander
(03:02):
the Great's great innovations. We didn't have a mounted force
of what we call cavalry in large numbers until the
medieval period. The Romans had some people on horseback, but
not as many as occurred when let's say eight hundred
or nine hundred.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Through an innovation by the way, called the stirrup.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Stirrups were not around before that early medieval period. And
when you have a syrup, think about it. If you
have a soldier on top of a horse, he really
can't do all that much if he's not planting his feet.
But if he can plant his feet in a stirrup
and raise himself up, he can strike down. He becomes
a more potent, a more dangerous, violent force. He could
(03:47):
also put more weight on his own body and therefore
more weight on the horse as well. So there's another
technological innovation, like the agricultural revolution, changing nailed horseshoes and
things like that that make these developments possible. So now
we have a mounted, armed, armored soldier in stirrups, and
(04:10):
these people start moving around the countryside. Oh, we're talking
now about eight hundred or nine hundred, and more than
one medieval historian has referred to the origins of knighthood
as thugs. A lot of these guys were gangs. They
were marauding the countryside, terrorizing the peasants, kind of playing
with these new toys, this heavy armor that they were wearing,
(04:33):
and they were raiding rich places. Well, one of the
rich places are monasteries and convents and churches. Now, obviously
the church can't countenance this, and also the church has
a responsibility to protect the poor. So an effort is
made through this kind of interesting title.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
The Peace of God or the Truce of God.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
These were actual documents, actual pieces of paper, but we
can refer to it as a movement as well, whereby
church leaders, local church leaders, abbots, abbesses, priests, and bishops
tried to kind of channel the violence. They were trying
to not make the violence, okay, not bless the violence,
(05:17):
but to say, listen, you know, I know you guys
are going to start fighting, so let's try to limit
when you're going to fight. And so the Peace of
God and the Truce of God and movements were attempts
to tell nights when they could and therefore couldn't fight, raid, attack,
And these pieces of paper begin to show up in
(05:38):
continental Europe about eight fifty or nine hundred, and then
nine to fifty and a thousand, all the more because
it was kind of working. Now, how did the peace
of God or the Truce of God work? What it
said was that there were limits to when nights could fight.
They could fight from Monday morning to Wednesday evening.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
That's only three days.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Why not Thursday, Friday, Saturday or a sun Well, originally
they could fight on Thursday and Friday, but then it
got pushed back because of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Saturday,
and then Sunday.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Every week. Sunday is like a little Easter.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
So what the bishops do is they take the concept
of Holy Week and they say, listen, you can't fight
from You can fight from sun up on Monday until
sundown on Wednesday, but you may not fight otherwise.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Who are they allowed to attack?
Speaker 3 (06:34):
This sounds crazy to our eyes, but who are they
allowed to attack. They're not allowed to attack clerics, even
an armed cleric, because the cleric might be armed to
defend himself. You cannot attack a cleric. You can never
attack a peasants. You can never attack a woman or
a child. You can never attack a monastery or a convent.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
So basically, if.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
You boys are going to fight, you can fight three
days a week and make sure you only fight each
other and that would be okay. Now what if you
broke the rules? What if you attacked a nun? What
if you fought on Sunday? There were heavy duty problems
if you did that, big penalties because the local bishop
or abbot would call these knights together and usually bring
(07:19):
out like relics of a local saints probably or even
bring out a consecrated host to the Eucharist and make
the knights swear that you know, put their hands on
these relics and say we will not break the truce.
So if they did, there could be severe penalties. They
could be cut off from the sacraments for a short
(07:40):
period of time or all the way up to and
including excommunication.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
And this worked sporadically.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
It did tend to quell the widespread thuggery and the
beating up.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Of local peasants.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
It tended to do that, but the wars when wars
would break out between this local duke and that local duke.
They really didn't usually have their eyes on the calendar.
So if they're going to press an advantage against an
enemy and it happens to be Wednesday night, it's likely
that on Thursday morning they would be fighting as well.
(08:18):
So it's kind of an attempt to channel violence, and
it works intermittently. But the important thing is that the
church's hand was now involved in these activities. Now, these
knights are become noble over time, and sometimes that nobility
is inherited. But the knight, the sir so and so
the knight who earns his spurs, if you will, that
(08:40):
becomes something that has to be earned. So a title
might come down, a sense of nobility or aristocracy might
come down through inheritance, but not necessarily this notion of
a knighthood. Now, some knights did get knighted for administrative
or diplomatic service.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
They would be rewarded with land.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Again, this was in the countryside and part of feudalism.
They became what was called the landed gentry or the
knights of the shire, and from that we get sheriffs.
But the important point for the church was that knighthood
if the church was going to take over knighthood, it
needed to imbue it with these religious aspects. And if
you've ever seen a representation of a dubbing ceremony whereby
(09:21):
a night becomes a night, it's a religious It looks
like an ordination, and it has kind of baptism and
confirmation in there as well. So the knight would, for instance,
be all dressed in white. He might lay down on
the ground in front of an altar and ask forgiveness
for his sins. He would then be raised up and
(09:43):
he might have water poured on his head or oil
like baptism or confirmation to be anointed a night.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
And all of the things that.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
He wears, the tunic underneath, the armor on top, the
gloves in the most elaborate ceremonies, the belt sometimes called
the garter makes a giggle, the helmet, and all of
these would have a blessing associated with it. And it
looks like, gee, the church is condoning violence. Well, what
the church is trying to do is say you may
(10:12):
wear this to defend the church, to defend the defense
less peasants, widow's orphans, and the poor.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
And so there were all of these little groups of knights,
and there.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Were two huge, very famous ones called the Knights of
the Temple or the Templars, who were established around eleven
thirty and their rule was written by none other than
Bernard of Clervaux, a famous Cistercian, and he saw these
knights who were called Knights of the Temple because they
had their headquarters on the Temple Mount, which was captured
(10:45):
by the Crusaders. We'll talk about the Crusades in the
next topic. Captured by the Crusaders about ten ninety nine,
and that's where their headquarters were.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
And Bernard saw these men as monk knights.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
In fact, they were tended to be celibate, and they
tend to take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and
a special vow to defend the church.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
And then there was another order.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Of nights also in Jerusalem called the Knights of the
Hospital or the Hospitallers. Now we need to explain that word.
When we say hospital, we have a certain modern conception.
It comes off of the word hostile hostel, a place
where young people backpack through Europe, a place to stay,
a place to have a meal in our day, a
(11:26):
place to have a shower, in their day, perhaps a
place to bathe once a month, once a week, and
also to get some rudimentary medical care. So the words
hostile and hospital and hospice are all related. And the
knights of the hospital actually pre date to ninety nine
when the Crusaders take over Jerusalem, because pilgrims had been
(11:48):
going to Jerusalem in large numbers, especially after nine hundred,
so the hospitallers primarily protected Jerusalem pilgrims.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Now where did these knights lived. They lived in castles.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
And when you go on your tours of Europe, the
second most frequent thing you look at our castles after
cathedrals and castles were built. Castles date back to the
eight or nine hundreds, again in the countryside in a
very rudimentary construction that's called a motte and bailey.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
If you've ever built a sand.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Castle with your kids or as a child yourself, you've
built a mott and bailey castle. So when we say
the word mott, we tend to think of, well, that
must be a moat.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
That's not actually true.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
So you're on the beach, let's say, and you're digging
a circle, and as you dig you're throwing sand in
the middle, and you're creating a mound, and that's the mott, right,
So it's either a natural mound or a hill, or
an artificial one which is landfill from digging this moat around.
So normally what you did was you would take a
high point and you would build it even higher for
(12:52):
defensive purposes, and the bailey was the enclosed area that
you would build so you could have a little village
within there. So that's the mott and bailey construction. And
so in that elevated little village where the other serfs
could come and be protected by the vassal if there
is an attack within there, you have all the things
(13:15):
you need to survive a siege, stables, storehouses, residences, and
over time, these rudimentary defensive structures which began with wood
end up in stone and they get more and more elaborate,
they get higher, they get bigger. Within you've ever been
to the Tower of London, for instance, this is an
example of that. Where Dover Castle or many other castles
(13:38):
in Europe, in fact, Cinderella's Castle in Disney World and
in Disneyland are modeled after one of the most famous
elaborate Winsome castles in Europe called Nu Schwanstein in southern
Germany in Bavaria, the impact of castle building was huge
on an economy, and the reason was, like a cathedral,
(14:02):
it takes a long time to build, and so it's
an employment engine and all of the people who build
that need to be housed and fed. So when you're
building a castle, it's for security. You need people involved
in construction, you need servants.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
You then have to.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Decorate the castle with tapestries and cloths. People need to
eat inside, so you need food production. Now, what was
the code that surrounded the behavior of these nights? This
code called chivalry.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
The legends of King Arthur, the Holy Grail and Sir Lancelot.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Fact, we're fiction, that's after the break.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
This is a code cut across cultures. So a French
knight has much more in common with a German night
than he does with the French peasant. And so if
a French knight is fighting a German knight, he probably
is not going to kill that night. What he's probably
going to try to do is take that guy for ransom.
(15:17):
And he would have seen that night. French and German knights,
they would have seen each other as brothers before the
French knight would have seen the French peasants as a brother,
or the German knight would have seen a German peasant
as a brother. Now, of course, the Arthurian legends the
most famous one part of this story, and there are
many Arthurian legends. Arthurian legends are kind of like Greco
(15:39):
Roman mythology. So when you teach this material, you say
you might tell a certain story, and then someone will say, what,
I thought Zeus did this, I thought Hercules did that.
I heard that Athena was the goddess of this, that
or the other. And the answer is yes, yes, and yes.
There's no one particular textbook of all the Arthurian legends,
but there are some that are more common than others,
(16:01):
and we're going to look at those a little bit
more closely. So legends are really piecemeal with many variations,
and each culture feeds in and elaborates on them. Arthurian
legends and similar legends of knights in shining armor and
damsels in distress have their origin like Homer's Iliad in
the Odyssey, centuries before, in an oral tradition through these
(16:26):
people called troubadours who would travel spot to spot and
perform traveling acting troops. And by the way, those troubadours
were members of a guilt and they had certain rules
that they had to follow.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
We have those rules.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
So at some point, like Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey,
these things were written down. We think that whoever the
man Homer was, did not make up the Iliod in
the Odyssey. He was an oral poet, hence the tradition
that he is blind, he does not need to see,
and he dictates maybe around nine hundred or eight hundred
BC or BCE, the Iliod in the Odyssey that had
(17:03):
been recited for several hundred years before. Same thing with Arthur.
So Arthurian legends, which have been spoken for several centuries.
They show up in manuscripts in this big cluster.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Most of those.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Manuscripts are written between eleven eighty and twelve forty. This
explosion of interest, people are all of a sudden interested
in it. It's kind of like around the year two thousand, right,
so starting in nineteen ninety six, that are all of
these end of the world books that start coming out.
So it indicates a frenzy and a great interest and
they are in every language that you can imagine, English, French, German, Welsh, Portuguese, Italian.
(17:40):
We tend not to think of Arthurian legends as Italian,
but there they are. Norwegian. There are Norwegian versions of
these as well. And these legends are interesting because they
weave together all sorts of cultures. For instance, Celtic influences,
Hagan Celtic influences find their way into the Arthurian legends.
(18:01):
For instance, in pagan pre Christian Celtic stories, there's often
a magic lance that is used to heal someone, or
you have plates that are empty that magically get filled
to feed hungry folks. And you could see the church
is going to come in and say the plate the
Eucharist that feeds the many, the feeding of.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
The five thousand, the story from the Gospel.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
So there you have up in the British Isles the
influence of these Celtic stories. But you also have a
Muslim influence. Again a reminder that the Middle Ages is
a multicultural global if you will, into religious society, very diverse.
(18:47):
You have had Christians fighting Muslims since seven point thirty
two over in Spain, when the Peace of God movement
and the knights come together around eight hundred nine hundred
one thousand. Obviously you're going to see this religious elements
coming into play.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
So who is the knight?
Speaker 3 (19:09):
The knight is a Christian who fights the good fight
against the so called infidel or the unfaithful one, or
the pagan Muslim.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
And so you get stories literature.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Handed down orally and then written down about great heroes
in Spain fighting the Muslims. And two important ones are
the legends of El Sid, a famous knight who fights
the Muslims, and the song of Roland, which dates back
to an incident around seven eighty when Roland is put
in charge of a rear guard Charlemagne. This is a
(19:44):
true incident. Charlemagne has come down into Spain around the Pyrenees.
The Muslims had encroached up over the Pyrenees and kind
of a rating party, and Charlemagne comes down, He puts
the Muslims down, he leaves, and Roland is in the
rear guard to protect the back of the troops. And
Roland refuses to leave a friend of his who is killed,
(20:06):
and it refuses to blow a horn to get help
because he would seem weak. He doesn't want to seem
weak in the eyes of his boss Charlemagne, and he
is killed by the Muslims. And the language against the
Muslims is very violent and very offensive. And Roland's soul
is taken up to heaven. So this great warrior. So
all of these influences come together. Now, even though I
(20:29):
said we have many variations, in many versions there are
there's a cycle of Arthurian stories that kind of all
the other stories key off of in variations based on
whatever your country and your culture is. And it's some
version of this standard trilogy, some version of the Lancelot story. Lancelot,
(20:50):
Arthur's second in command, his major Domo, falls in love
with Gwenevere, Arthur's wife. They have an affair, Arthur has
to get rid of both Guenevere and exile Lancelot. The
Great Trail story of betrayal captured in in the nineteen
sixties in the musical Camelot.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Then there's the Quest of the Holy.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Grail again different versions before this betrayal or after this betrayal.
Most people of a certain age will remember Monty Python
and the Holy Grail, which was made into a Broadway
musical called Spamlot kind of a silly version of the
story that God gives Arthur and his knights a particular quest,
the quest to find the Holy Grail, a story that
(21:34):
ends up in Indiana Jones movies and all sorts of novels.
And then some version of the death of King Arthur.
And there are many versions of King Arthur, some that
he dies, some of that he actually doesn't die. He's
taken away to a place called Avalon, and he is
known as the once in future King because he doesn't
actually die. So there are elements there of kind of
(21:57):
an assumption of the blessed Virgin Mary or a resurrection,
that kind of theme. Where does this trilogy come from, Well,
the Homer of the Arthurian period, as somebody called Jeffrey,
Jeffrey of Monmouth, who synthesized these Latin chronicles of British kings.
He's writing about the twelfth century, and he synthesizes these
(22:17):
chronicles of the British kings, and in that synthesis he
makes Arthur sound like an historical person. So people who
lived in the thirteen fourteen fifteen hundreds were pretty sure
that Arthur really lived. Now, there probably was some prototype
character of Arthur dating back to the fifth or the
sixth century AD or CE, if you remember. The Roman
(22:40):
Empire had withdrawn its forces as things got a little
tight toward the end of the Roman Empire in the
four hundreds, and so as they moved down, Welsh or
Celtic tribes began to take over or retake the British
isles and take control.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
And there probably was a.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Leader in there, a rebel leader, if you will, who
rallied the local population against the Romans. And that's probably
the origin of this character named Arthur. So there's Arthur
in history as they believed it at that point. And
that collection by Jeffrey of Monmouth in Latin and then
(23:24):
in English is translated into French by a fellow named Waste,
and then this vernacular explosion occurs right after.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
So that's that eleven eighty to twelve forty window.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
And so there was this flowering of literature about chivalry,
what are called songs of war in French, the chansels,
the gest or courtly romances or stories of this exalted
chaste love known as fene more in the Roman in
the French, in the French literature, and an example of
this might be Sir Thomas Mallory's Death of King Arthur,
(23:59):
written in the fifteenth century, which is an example of
a song of war. These are often written in poetic
verse as epic poems, and it has the story of
courtly romance and this chaste love. So what is the
story of the Death of King Arthur influential? Because it
was then transported into the modern world, Most people who
(24:20):
know Arthurian legends are keying off of Mallory's version in
one way or another. It picks up the aftermath of
the quest, right, so we've had some version of the
Lancelot story, some version of the Quest of the Holy Grail.
So now we're moving into the Death of King Arthur,
the third part of the trilogy, and it has very
strong religious overtones. There's a king who guards the Grail.
(24:41):
He's called the Fisher King or the Maimed King, and
he's wounded according to this particular version, by.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
The lance used by a Roman.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Soldier at the crucifixion. And his name is Longinus in
this version. So remember Lance's magical lances, healing lances Celtic influence,
and he was.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Wounded by this lance.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
In according to one vers version, his groin which may
be an indication of infertility, or his hips or his legs.
The point is that he cannot walk, and so that
fisher King becomes the Grail's keeper, And in one British version,
the Grail's Keeper is a descendant of Joseph of Aramathea.
(25:24):
Joseph of Aramathea was the biblical character who asked Punches
Pilot for the body of Jesus and took him down
and put him in a tomb that he, Joseph, had
bought for himself. So Joseph of Aramathea or Joseph of
Arimathea's sons travel to Britain with the grail and they
protect it, and all of the knights of King Arthur
(25:45):
have to quest alone. There are one hundred and fifty
of them, but they split up. And this is a
notion of that spiritual awakening right that we're all on
a journey. It's the classic hero's journey. He has to
fight forces, he has to unlock riddles. He gets boons
and good things along the way. He comes up against
all these and forks in the road. He has to
(26:06):
make decisions. The end is unclear, everything is shrouded and missed.
He can't see castles, and it gives the image of
life as a journey and life as an exile. So
this is the theory of chivalry.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
That's a wrap on this episode of Half Hour History
Secrets of the Medieval World.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Next time the Crusades.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Half Hour History Secrets of the Medieval World from One
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Speaker 1 (27:01):
School of Humans
Lessons from the world's top professors.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Anytime, any place, world history examined and science explained.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
This is one day university. Welcome. We're back with.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Another episode of half hour history Secrets of the Medieval World.
I'm your host, Mike Coscarelli. Last episode, we've talked about
the intellectual Renaissance and a challenge to the Church. Now
it's time for knights, armor, rules of engagement and chivalry.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
It's all here. Here's Chris.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
So we've just spent a little time talking about the
twelfth century Renaissance and this upsurge of spirituality, which had
some negative connotations when the Church began to be repressive
toward heresy. And even though we said that that kind
of repression feeds into the caricature of a dark ages,
wiping all that aside, you can't deny that at about
(01:25):
ten fifty eleven hundred, there's this flowering this high medieval period,
as if, as if medieval Europe began to wake up
from a long nap since the Carolingian Renaissance had collapsed
at about eight fifty, and an important part of that.
In fact, one of the first things people think about
when they study medieval history or where they think about
the Middle Ages are knights, knights in shining armor. Little
(01:48):
boys and little girls like to play those stories, like
to hear the stories of the Arthurian romances, like to
go to museums and see the suits of armor. Maybe
they've been to a Renaissance fair, which usually looks more
like a medieval fair, but somehow the Renaissance fair makes
it sound brighter and better, and so people enjoy these
stories of jousting and tournaments and things like that. So
(02:10):
let's focus for a few minutes on knighthood. Let's see
where they lived in castles, and then let's take a
step back and look at this code called chivalry and
try to look at it in theory and then in
practice as well.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
So let's begin with knighthood.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
The very beginning of knighthood reaches back to the Middle Ages.
And there's a particular word very early in the Middle
Ages called melez, and that actually goes back even further
to the Roman word for soldier, a melez.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
It would be.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Milites in another form of Latin, from which we get
the word military. Now, the Roman soldier was by and
large an infantryman, a foot soldier. We do have examples
of mounted soldiers, say with Alexander the Great around three
point thirty BC or BCE. That was one of Alexander
(03:02):
the Great's great innovations. We didn't have a mounted force
of what we call cavalry in large numbers until the
medieval period. The Romans had some people on horseback, but
not as many as occurred when let's say eight hundred
or nine hundred.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Through an innovation by the way, called the stirrup.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Stirrups were not around before that early medieval period. And
when you have a syrup, think about it. If you
have a soldier on top of a horse, he really
can't do all that much if he's not planting his feet.
But if he can plant his feet in a stirrup
and raise himself up, he can strike down. He becomes
a more potent, a more dangerous, violent force. He could
(03:47):
also put more weight on his own body and therefore
more weight on the horse as well. So there's another
technological innovation, like the agricultural revolution, changing nailed horseshoes and
things like that that make these developments possible. So now
we have a mounted, armed, armored soldier in stirrups, and
(04:10):
these people start moving around the countryside. Oh, we're talking
now about eight hundred or nine hundred, and more than
one medieval historian has referred to the origins of knighthood
as thugs. A lot of these guys were gangs. They
were marauding the countryside, terrorizing the peasants, kind of playing
with these new toys, this heavy armor that they were wearing,
(04:33):
and they were raiding rich places. Well, one of the
rich places are monasteries and convents and churches. Now, obviously
the church can't countenance this, and also the church has
a responsibility to protect the poor. So an effort is
made through this kind of interesting title.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
The Peace of God or the Truce of God.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
These were actual documents, actual pieces of paper, but we
can refer to it as a movement as well, whereby
church leaders, local church leaders, abbots, abbesses, priests, and bishops
tried to kind of channel the violence. They were trying
to not make the violence, okay, not bless the violence,
(05:17):
but to say, listen, you know, I know you guys
are going to start fighting, so let's try to limit
when you're going to fight. And so the Peace of
God and the Truce of God and movements were attempts
to tell nights when they could and therefore couldn't fight, raid, attack,
And these pieces of paper begin to show up in
(05:38):
continental Europe about eight fifty or nine hundred, and then
nine to fifty and a thousand, all the more because
it was kind of working. Now, how did the peace
of God or the Truce of God work? What it
said was that there were limits to when nights could fight.
They could fight from Monday morning to Wednesday evening.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
That's only three days.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Why not Thursday, Friday, Saturday or a sun Well, originally
they could fight on Thursday and Friday, but then it
got pushed back because of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Saturday,
and then Sunday.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Every week. Sunday is like a little Easter.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
So what the bishops do is they take the concept
of Holy Week and they say, listen, you can't fight
from You can fight from sun up on Monday until
sundown on Wednesday, but you may not fight otherwise.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Who are they allowed to attack?
Speaker 3 (06:34):
This sounds crazy to our eyes, but who are they
allowed to attack. They're not allowed to attack clerics, even
an armed cleric, because the cleric might be armed to
defend himself. You cannot attack a cleric. You can never
attack a peasants. You can never attack a woman or
a child. You can never attack a monastery or a convent.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
So basically, if.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
You boys are going to fight, you can fight three
days a week and make sure you only fight each
other and that would be okay. Now what if you
broke the rules? What if you attacked a nun? What
if you fought on Sunday? There were heavy duty problems
if you did that, big penalties because the local bishop
or abbot would call these knights together and usually bring
(07:19):
out like relics of a local saints probably or even
bring out a consecrated host to the Eucharist and make
the knights swear that you know, put their hands on
these relics and say we will not break the truce.
So if they did, there could be severe penalties. They
could be cut off from the sacraments for a short
(07:40):
period of time or all the way up to and
including excommunication.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
And this worked sporadically.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
It did tend to quell the widespread thuggery and the
beating up.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Of local peasants.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
It tended to do that, but the wars when wars
would break out between this local duke and that local duke.
They really didn't usually have their eyes on the calendar.
So if they're going to press an advantage against an
enemy and it happens to be Wednesday night, it's likely
that on Thursday morning they would be fighting as well.
(08:18):
So it's kind of an attempt to channel violence, and
it works intermittently. But the important thing is that the
church's hand was now involved in these activities. Now, these
knights are become noble over time, and sometimes that nobility
is inherited. But the knight, the sir so and so
the knight who earns his spurs, if you will, that
(08:40):
becomes something that has to be earned. So a title
might come down, a sense of nobility or aristocracy might
come down through inheritance, but not necessarily this notion of
a knighthood. Now, some knights did get knighted for administrative
or diplomatic service.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
They would be rewarded with land.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Again, this was in the countryside and part of feudalism.
They became what was called the landed gentry or the
knights of the shire, and from that we get sheriffs.
But the important point for the church was that knighthood
if the church was going to take over knighthood, it
needed to imbue it with these religious aspects. And if
you've ever seen a representation of a dubbing ceremony whereby
(09:21):
a night becomes a night, it's a religious It looks
like an ordination, and it has kind of baptism and
confirmation in there as well. So the knight would, for instance,
be all dressed in white. He might lay down on
the ground in front of an altar and ask forgiveness
for his sins. He would then be raised up and
(09:43):
he might have water poured on his head or oil
like baptism or confirmation to be anointed a night.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
And all of the things that.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
He wears, the tunic underneath, the armor on top, the
gloves in the most elaborate ceremonies, the belt sometimes called
the garter makes a giggle, the helmet, and all of
these would have a blessing associated with it. And it
looks like, gee, the church is condoning violence. Well, what
the church is trying to do is say you may
(10:12):
wear this to defend the church, to defend the defense
less peasants, widow's orphans, and the poor.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
And so there were all of these little groups of knights,
and there.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Were two huge, very famous ones called the Knights of
the Temple or the Templars, who were established around eleven
thirty and their rule was written by none other than
Bernard of Clervaux, a famous Cistercian, and he saw these
knights who were called Knights of the Temple because they
had their headquarters on the Temple Mount, which was captured
(10:45):
by the Crusaders. We'll talk about the Crusades in the
next topic. Captured by the Crusaders about ten ninety nine,
and that's where their headquarters were.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
And Bernard saw these men as monk knights.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
In fact, they were tended to be celibate, and they
tend to take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and
a special vow to defend the church.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
And then there was another order.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Of nights also in Jerusalem called the Knights of the
Hospital or the Hospitallers. Now we need to explain that word.
When we say hospital, we have a certain modern conception.
It comes off of the word hostile hostel, a place
where young people backpack through Europe, a place to stay,
a place to have a meal in our day, a
(11:26):
place to have a shower, in their day, perhaps a
place to bathe once a month, once a week, and
also to get some rudimentary medical care. So the words
hostile and hospital and hospice are all related. And the
knights of the hospital actually pre date to ninety nine
when the Crusaders take over Jerusalem, because pilgrims had been
(11:48):
going to Jerusalem in large numbers, especially after nine hundred,
so the hospitallers primarily protected Jerusalem pilgrims.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Now where did these knights lived. They lived in castles.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
And when you go on your tours of Europe, the
second most frequent thing you look at our castles after
cathedrals and castles were built. Castles date back to the
eight or nine hundreds, again in the countryside in a
very rudimentary construction that's called a motte and bailey.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
If you've ever built a sand.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Castle with your kids or as a child yourself, you've
built a mott and bailey castle. So when we say
the word mott, we tend to think of, well, that
must be a moat.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
That's not actually true.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
So you're on the beach, let's say, and you're digging
a circle, and as you dig you're throwing sand in
the middle, and you're creating a mound, and that's the mott, right,
So it's either a natural mound or a hill, or
an artificial one which is landfill from digging this moat around.
So normally what you did was you would take a
high point and you would build it even higher for
(12:52):
defensive purposes, and the bailey was the enclosed area that
you would build so you could have a little village
within there. So that's the mott and bailey construction. And
so in that elevated little village where the other serfs
could come and be protected by the vassal if there
is an attack within there, you have all the things
(13:15):
you need to survive a siege, stables, storehouses, residences, and
over time, these rudimentary defensive structures which began with wood
end up in stone and they get more and more elaborate,
they get higher, they get bigger. Within you've ever been
to the Tower of London, for instance, this is an
example of that. Where Dover Castle or many other castles
(13:38):
in Europe, in fact, Cinderella's Castle in Disney World and
in Disneyland are modeled after one of the most famous
elaborate Winsome castles in Europe called Nu Schwanstein in southern
Germany in Bavaria, the impact of castle building was huge
on an economy, and the reason was, like a cathedral,
(14:02):
it takes a long time to build, and so it's
an employment engine and all of the people who build
that need to be housed and fed. So when you're
building a castle, it's for security. You need people involved
in construction, you need servants.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
You then have to.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Decorate the castle with tapestries and cloths. People need to
eat inside, so you need food production. Now, what was
the code that surrounded the behavior of these nights? This
code called chivalry.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
The legends of King Arthur, the Holy Grail and Sir Lancelot.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Fact, we're fiction, that's after the break.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
This is a code cut across cultures. So a French
knight has much more in common with a German night
than he does with the French peasant. And so if
a French knight is fighting a German knight, he probably
is not going to kill that night. What he's probably
going to try to do is take that guy for ransom.
(15:17):
And he would have seen that night. French and German knights,
they would have seen each other as brothers before the
French knight would have seen the French peasants as a brother,
or the German knight would have seen a German peasant
as a brother. Now, of course, the Arthurian legends the
most famous one part of this story, and there are
many Arthurian legends. Arthurian legends are kind of like Greco
(15:39):
Roman mythology. So when you teach this material, you say
you might tell a certain story, and then someone will say, what,
I thought Zeus did this, I thought Hercules did that.
I heard that Athena was the goddess of this, that
or the other. And the answer is yes, yes, and yes.
There's no one particular textbook of all the Arthurian legends,
but there are some that are more common than others,
(16:01):
and we're going to look at those a little bit
more closely. So legends are really piecemeal with many variations,
and each culture feeds in and elaborates on them. Arthurian
legends and similar legends of knights in shining armor and
damsels in distress have their origin like Homer's Iliad in
the Odyssey, centuries before, in an oral tradition through these
(16:26):
people called troubadours who would travel spot to spot and
perform traveling acting troops. And by the way, those troubadours
were members of a guilt and they had certain rules
that they had to follow.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
We have those rules.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
So at some point, like Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey,
these things were written down. We think that whoever the
man Homer was, did not make up the Iliod in
the Odyssey. He was an oral poet, hence the tradition
that he is blind, he does not need to see,
and he dictates maybe around nine hundred or eight hundred
BC or BCE, the Iliod in the Odyssey that had
(17:03):
been recited for several hundred years before. Same thing with Arthur.
So Arthurian legends, which have been spoken for several centuries.
They show up in manuscripts in this big cluster.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Most of those.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Manuscripts are written between eleven eighty and twelve forty. This
explosion of interest, people are all of a sudden interested
in it. It's kind of like around the year two thousand, right,
so starting in nineteen ninety six, that are all of
these end of the world books that start coming out.
So it indicates a frenzy and a great interest and
they are in every language that you can imagine, English, French, German, Welsh, Portuguese, Italian.
(17:40):
We tend not to think of Arthurian legends as Italian,
but there they are. Norwegian. There are Norwegian versions of
these as well. And these legends are interesting because they
weave together all sorts of cultures. For instance, Celtic influences,
Hagan Celtic influences find their way into the Arthurian legends.
(18:01):
For instance, in pagan pre Christian Celtic stories, there's often
a magic lance that is used to heal someone, or
you have plates that are empty that magically get filled
to feed hungry folks. And you could see the church
is going to come in and say the plate the
Eucharist that feeds the many, the feeding of.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
The five thousand, the story from the Gospel.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
So there you have up in the British Isles the
influence of these Celtic stories. But you also have a
Muslim influence. Again a reminder that the Middle Ages is
a multicultural global if you will, into religious society, very diverse.
(18:47):
You have had Christians fighting Muslims since seven point thirty
two over in Spain, when the Peace of God movement
and the knights come together around eight hundred nine hundred
one thousand. Obviously you're going to see this religious elements
coming into play.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
So who is the knight?
Speaker 3 (19:09):
The knight is a Christian who fights the good fight
against the so called infidel or the unfaithful one, or
the pagan Muslim.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
And so you get stories literature.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Handed down orally and then written down about great heroes
in Spain fighting the Muslims. And two important ones are
the legends of El Sid, a famous knight who fights
the Muslims, and the song of Roland, which dates back
to an incident around seven eighty when Roland is put
in charge of a rear guard Charlemagne. This is a
(19:44):
true incident. Charlemagne has come down into Spain around the Pyrenees.
The Muslims had encroached up over the Pyrenees and kind
of a rating party, and Charlemagne comes down, He puts
the Muslims down, he leaves, and Roland is in the
rear guard to protect the back of the troops. And
Roland refuses to leave a friend of his who is killed,
(20:06):
and it refuses to blow a horn to get help
because he would seem weak. He doesn't want to seem
weak in the eyes of his boss Charlemagne, and he
is killed by the Muslims. And the language against the
Muslims is very violent and very offensive. And Roland's soul
is taken up to heaven. So this great warrior. So
all of these influences come together. Now, even though I
(20:29):
said we have many variations, in many versions there are
there's a cycle of Arthurian stories that kind of all
the other stories key off of in variations based on
whatever your country and your culture is. And it's some
version of this standard trilogy, some version of the Lancelot story. Lancelot,
(20:50):
Arthur's second in command, his major Domo, falls in love
with Gwenevere, Arthur's wife. They have an affair, Arthur has
to get rid of both Guenevere and exile Lancelot. The
Great Trail story of betrayal captured in in the nineteen
sixties in the musical Camelot.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Then there's the Quest of the Holy.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Grail again different versions before this betrayal or after this betrayal.
Most people of a certain age will remember Monty Python
and the Holy Grail, which was made into a Broadway
musical called Spamlot kind of a silly version of the
story that God gives Arthur and his knights a particular quest,
the quest to find the Holy Grail, a story that
(21:34):
ends up in Indiana Jones movies and all sorts of novels.
And then some version of the death of King Arthur.
And there are many versions of King Arthur, some that
he dies, some of that he actually doesn't die. He's
taken away to a place called Avalon, and he is
known as the once in future King because he doesn't
actually die. So there are elements there of kind of
(21:57):
an assumption of the blessed Virgin Mary or a resurrection,
that kind of theme. Where does this trilogy come from, Well,
the Homer of the Arthurian period, as somebody called Jeffrey,
Jeffrey of Monmouth, who synthesized these Latin chronicles of British kings.
He's writing about the twelfth century, and he synthesizes these
(22:17):
chronicles of the British kings, and in that synthesis he
makes Arthur sound like an historical person. So people who
lived in the thirteen fourteen fifteen hundreds were pretty sure
that Arthur really lived. Now, there probably was some prototype
character of Arthur dating back to the fifth or the
sixth century AD or CE, if you remember. The Roman
(22:40):
Empire had withdrawn its forces as things got a little
tight toward the end of the Roman Empire in the
four hundreds, and so as they moved down, Welsh or
Celtic tribes began to take over or retake the British
isles and take control.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
And there probably was a.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Leader in there, a rebel leader, if you will, who
rallied the local population against the Romans. And that's probably
the origin of this character named Arthur. So there's Arthur
in history as they believed it at that point. And
that collection by Jeffrey of Monmouth in Latin and then
(23:24):
in English is translated into French by a fellow named Waste,
and then this vernacular explosion occurs right after.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
So that's that eleven eighty to twelve forty window.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
And so there was this flowering of literature about chivalry,
what are called songs of war in French, the chansels,
the gest or courtly romances or stories of this exalted
chaste love known as fene more in the Roman in
the French, in the French literature, and an example of
this might be Sir Thomas Mallory's Death of King Arthur,
(23:59):
written in the fifteenth century, which is an example of
a song of war. These are often written in poetic
verse as epic poems, and it has the story of
courtly romance and this chaste love. So what is the
story of the Death of King Arthur influential? Because it
was then transported into the modern world, Most people who
(24:20):
know Arthurian legends are keying off of Mallory's version in
one way or another. It picks up the aftermath of
the quest, right, so we've had some version of the
Lancelot story, some version of the Quest of the Holy Grail.
So now we're moving into the Death of King Arthur,
the third part of the trilogy, and it has very
strong religious overtones. There's a king who guards the Grail.
(24:41):
He's called the Fisher King or the Maimed King, and
he's wounded according to this particular version, by.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
The lance used by a Roman.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Soldier at the crucifixion. And his name is Longinus in
this version. So remember Lance's magical lances, healing lances Celtic influence,
and he was.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Wounded by this lance.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
In according to one vers version, his groin which may
be an indication of infertility, or his hips or his legs.
The point is that he cannot walk, and so that
fisher King becomes the Grail's keeper, And in one British version,
the Grail's Keeper is a descendant of Joseph of Aramathea.
(25:24):
Joseph of Aramathea was the biblical character who asked Punches
Pilot for the body of Jesus and took him down
and put him in a tomb that he, Joseph, had
bought for himself. So Joseph of Aramathea or Joseph of
Arimathea's sons travel to Britain with the grail and they
protect it, and all of the knights of King Arthur
(25:45):
have to quest alone. There are one hundred and fifty
of them, but they split up. And this is a
notion of that spiritual awakening right that we're all on
a journey. It's the classic hero's journey. He has to
fight forces, he has to unlock riddles. He gets boons
and good things along the way. He comes up against
all these and forks in the road. He has to
(26:06):
make decisions. The end is unclear, everything is shrouded and missed.
He can't see castles, and it gives the image of
life as a journey and life as an exile. So
this is the theory of chivalry.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
That's a wrap on this episode of Half Hour History
Secrets of the Medieval World.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Next time the Crusades.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Half Hour History Secrets of the Medieval World from One
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