First, of course, were the military virtues of courage, prowess, and loyalty
to one’s lord (which the knight still needed in his basic capacity as a pug-
nator[Latin; fighter]), and with them the virtues of compassion and fair
play toward other knights. The knight was also expected to be a good
Catholic Christian, loyal to his faith and Church. In addition, however, as
a member of a social estate of noble lords whose rights and duties derived
from those of the king as head of the estate, the knight was expected to be
an active defender of the faith and Church, and to participate in a crusade
if the opportunity arose to do so. Finally, in the same capacity, the knight
was expected to carry out on the local level the royal duty of defending the
weakest members of society: widows, orphans, unprotected girls, and cler-
ics. Given the social attitudes of the nobility to which all knights belonged,
of course, this obligation was only recognized toward the widows, or-
phans, and unmarried daughters of fellow nobles, and was not extended to
any member of the lower orders of society; it was no accident that damsel
meant “young noblewoman.”
As a member of the estate whose principal duties were to rule as well
as to fight, the knight was also expected to assist in the administration of
government. This duty often required even the landed knight to spend part
of the year in his seignior’s or prince’s court, and made many knights into
part-time courtiers. More ambitious knights were required to learn the
rules governing proper behavior in this exalted environment, especially in
relations with prelates and ladies. The earliest codes of courtliness had been
composed by noble prelates resident in the court of the emperor Otto I in
the later tenth century, and these seem to have served as models for the
later codes governing the behavior of lay nobles in courts of every level of
the lordly hierarchy. Their main concerns were with the avoidance of con-
flict and with pleasing the ruler and his wife with elegance and refinement
of speech, behavior, and dress. The chivalric version of the code of courtli-
ness incorporated all of these ideas, but added to them an idea derived from
the love songs first composed by the trobadorsof southern France and Bur-
gundy ca. 1100: the idea that a true knight should have a special devotion
to a single noble lady, usually of higher rank than the knight himself, and
usually married. Sincere love for such a lady was supposed to inspire the
knight to deeds of valor done principally to win her admiration, and pos-
sibly a return of the love. In practice, this element of the code seems to have
been treated by most knights as a game having nothing to do with the re-
alities of life in a society in which marriages were always arranged and the
chastity of both wives and daughters was jealously guarded, but it contin-
ued to be played well into the fifteenth century.
The first tournaments in which the entertainments directly imitated
events described in Arthurian romances are recorded from the 1220s, by
Knights 275