It may cause some surprise that a chapter on Medieval European chivalry takes as its focus issues of causation or even encouragement of violence, rather than its restraint or careful moderation.

Within modern Western culture the popular view on chivalry has been generated by glowing cine­matic images, by novels bearing bright covers featuring brave men rescuing beautiful women, and by the endless heroic fantasies of video gaming.

In fact, the roots of this problem of interpretation reach much more deeply into our cultural past than its topsoil and spread far beneath the glowing surface of the present to draw upon embedded interpretations now centuries old. From at least the late eighteenth century, and powerfully throughout the nineteenth century, the groundwork was laid by Romantic writers and scholars who produced both historical accounts and imaginative fiction (easily blurred categories, of course). To them the medieval past was not merely colourful; they were certain how wonderfully usefully this period could point the way to solutions for a wide range of issues that much concerned them. The polymath intellectual Henry Adams unambiguously stated the benediction by declaring that ‘The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were a period when men were at their strongest.'1 These neo-Romantics found purity and clarity of vision in medieval people (a view reflected in Pre-Raphaelite painting or neo­Romanesque and neo-Gothic art and architecture). Medieval ideals and

1 His declaration is quoted (along with similar benedictions from other eminent Victorians) in the Silver Jubilee edition of James J. Walsh, The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries (New York: Catholic Summer School Press, 1932). Originally published in 1907, the book was reprinted several times. See the discussion in H. W. Kirwin, ‘James J. Walsh - Medieval Historian and Pathfinder', Catholic Historical Review 45 (1958-9), 409-35.

If medieval forms and ideals in general could be useful in a distantly post­medieval world, chivalry in particular was worthy of revival; it could address what Victorians thought of as ‘the boy problem', for it might channel excessive male vigour and a regrettable tendency to violence by directing these impulses into safer and less disruptive outlets. The magisterial French medievalist Leon Gautier even constructed a tablet of the chivalric Ten Commandments that, in effect, provided a sacred valorisation for nine­teenth-century nationalism, sustained by Roman Catholic morality.^[836]

In an atmosphere dominated by such views it became almost impossible for scholars to look back through this rosy mist and to see chivalry as it was in its own time and place. Instead, they tended to see what they wanted: knights in shining armour riding to the rescue of the oppressed (and especially the rescue of women), or surging forward to fight boldly in morally sound causes (however reluctantly they indulged in bloody violence). Even in the present we continue to think of modern movements we like as crusades and have a long history of labelling them as such.

Obvious importance attaches to understanding the sheer scale and signifi­cance of elite warrior violence throughout nearly half a millennium of early European history. Far from being merely frivolous, ideals of chivalry spoke to such basic dimensions of life as acceptable violence, destructive and profitable war, religious piety, social status and distribution of wealth, and gendered relationships. Our analysis in this brief chapter, thankfully, can focus on the violence, though that task is challenging enough, since licit and even lauded violence was entangled with so many basic structures of medieval thought and practice.

Scraping away centuries of romantic tinsel can clear a path to genuine medieval sources. Yet even when we reach this authentic medieval evidence caution is again needed, for medieval thinkers knew the power of chivalry in their world and wanted to shape it according to ideal standards. The famous prescriptive treatises so often used by scholars are, of course, highly informa­tive, for they show us what thoughtful writers wanted in an ideal practice of chivalry. Yet these views (ofJohn of Salisbury, Ramon Llull and Christine de Pisan, for example) can all too easily be taken as showing accepted and common practice of knighthood, rather than reformist propaganda directed at perceived social dangers. In fact, idealist views are more likely to show us what learned commentators in that world thought was actually missing in chivalric practice; their sharp pens point to gaps, rather than achieved standards. We need authentic knightly opinions, cutting through the lush and obscuring undergrowth of post-medieval romanticism and recognising medieval voices of reform for what they are.

The goal, in short, must be to find and understand working codes of medieval chivalry, the sets of issues and ideals for behaviour that elite medieval warriors could discuss over mulled wine after dinner in a castle hall, or while sitting around the embers of an open-air fire on one of their seemingly endless campaigns.

Where can we find the voices of the knights themselves or those very close to chivalry as it actually functioned? Two outstanding sources come quickly to mind. A History of William Marshal, one of the outstanding knights in the territories bordering the English Channel in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century, was written under commission by his son after William's death in 1226. To a certain extent William is, himself, almost a co­author, as the account often draws on his own stories and reflections, or at least on the memories and opinions of those close to him. The result is a priceless portrayal of chivalric life and values.^[837] More than a century later, Geoffroi de Charny (d. 1356), one of the most renowned knights during the first phase of the Hundred Years War, wrote his own prose Book of Chivalry, along with a shorter version in verse and a book of questions to be debated by the royal order of chivalry founded by his king, Jean le Bon.^[838] Both William and Geoffroi were vigorous knights, held up as models. The book about the Marshal and the prose treatise by Messire Geoffroi will be used extensively, for they bring us as close as we are likely to come to working codes of chivalry.

This analytical focus entails no denigration of medieval achievement, no denial that chivalry still charms us with colourful costumes, courtly speech and dramatic gestures. Nor should it lead to denial that chivalrous patrons sought and gifted authors produced a glorious literature that can be read with pleasure and admiration to this day. Some modern people still take respectful instruction from certain abstract ideals such as chivalric loyalty and what modern admirers at least understand as chivalric honour. Yet we must exercise great caution and be certain of understanding how such values worked in their own society, whom they benefited, what needs they met, and especially within what social limitations they applied. Above all we must always keep in our sights the joyous approval of elite violence that occupied so central a role in chivalric thought and practice.

With a focus on such evidence close to the warriors, three approaches will help us towards understanding actual, working chivalric codes and the practice of chivalric violence. The first is a consideration of how heroic warrior violence was valorised through a widespread chivalric ideology. Although chivalric ideals could never display a simple uniformity across the considerable time and space of medieval Europe, certain fundamentals formed a recognisable core over several centuries; we can look for what was commonly said across a wide swath of time and space about the involvement of the lay elite in violence. Whenever warnings are given to warriors, these, too, will demand attention. A second approach considers more specifically the significant, if complicated, relationship that bonded chivalry to the religious ideals of its world. This topic is too easily limited to crusading and the ideals associated with it. All these ideals were certainly at issue; but the approach must be much broader than crusade and it must link quotidian life and practice to dominant religious values preached to and accepted by the lay elite. If the first two approaches regularly focus on what knights heard and thought, we need finally to look clearly at what they did as warriors. This inquiry will take us to their beloved tournament fields and onto the campaign trail and the battlefield. In each of these three efforts, it is worth emphasising, we must try to get as close to the men at arms as is possible, seeking to understand how they conceptualised their lives, their elevated status, and their profession as elite fighters. Only by edging as close as possible to their thought and practice can we discover how they conceived of the bold actions they took.