before and in the name of God; the sacredness of the
vow placed a heavier burden on the Christian knight
than did any secular oath or promise he might have
made. The swearing of oaths was also a part of secular
judicial practice and, in that manner, came to be incor-
porated into the chivalric literature of the Middle Ages
and Renaissance. Chivalric oaths came in a variety of
forms: They were statements of duty sworn to some-
one, as in ARTHURIAN LITERATURE, where the knights
swear loyalty to King ARTHUR; they were sworn against
someone, as in the Song of Roland, in which Roland
swears to make the SARACENs suffer for every Frank who
is killed; or they were personal vows of intent, as in SIR
GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT, in which the knightly
hero vows to accept the Green Knight’s challenge.
The oaths or vows of CHIVALRY have their origins in
the Germanic warrior ethos, in which oaths and heroic
boasting (and the two were closely linked) were an
integral part of the warrior culture; and as such, oaths
also played an integral part in warrior literature. Even
before the codes of chivalry were articulated (beginning
in the 12th century), Anglo-Saxon literature was fi lled
with tales of warriors swearing oaths, promises of brave
deeds to come, and vows of loyalty to chief and tribe.
The swearing of oaths in ANGLO-SAXON POETRY, such as
JUDITH or The BATTLE OF MALDON, provided a way for
poets to convey the extent to which warfare, and the
obligations it placed on the warrior class, held the soci-
ety together. The swearing of oaths, particularly before
or during a battle, created a communal identity for the
oath-takers. The use of oaths, either prechivalry or chi-
valric proper, reinforced the warrior culture as the ideal
social order. It was also a way for characters to establish
social boundaries between the oath-taker and the oath-
giver, while Renaissance poets added another layer to
the oaths. In the great age of PATRONAGE, they often ded-
icated their works to specifi c (albeit sometimes unnamed)
patrons, which were often written as oaths in poetic
form, echoing the chivalric oaths that sometimes
appeared within the works in question.
See also ANGLO-SAXON POETRY.
FURTHER READING
Keen, Maurice. Chivalry. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 1984, 1987.
Candace Gregory-Abbott
CHIVALRY The simplest meaning of the term
chivalry refers to the idealized conduct of war in the
high-to-late Middle Ages (ca. 1100–1500). Chivalry
can be as basic as heavily armed cavalry battling against
each other or as sophisticated as philosophical theories
about how war should be conducted. In its later, more
sophisticated uses, it came to also be associated with a
code of social behavior during that same time period.
These are only two of the many concepts associated
with chivalry. In both of these meanings, the term was
wholly linked with the aristocratic class of the High
Middle Ages.
In English literature, chivalry refers to the mounted
noble warrior, the knight; his code of conduct (on and
off the battlefi eld); and how the knight relates to his
class, his king, and the object of his affection, his
“lady.” In its most Christianized form, chivalry carried
with it high expectations of virtuous and noble behav-
ior on behalf of God, the church, and those the church
marked as worthy of protection. It emphasized the
Christian virtues of generosity, loyalty, honesty, brav-
ery, and spiritual purity (which are frequently exhib-
ited by physical chastity). It was always more ideal
than real. This ideal remained a staple of English cul-
ture throughout the Renaissance and later, and
although the culture of commerce and trade eventually
became the norm, chivalry was revived in the Victorian
period as the epitome of noble, Christian behavior.
In terms of literature, chivalry was a staple of the
medieval EPIC and ROMANCE genres. During the Renais-
sance, it was transformed into an elegiac, nostalgic
genre that looked back to a medieval past that had
never been as real as the writers might have wished.
Chivalry was more real in the literature of the Middle
Ages and Renaissance than it ever was in life: It repre-
sented life as it should have been. Chivalry and English
medieval literature intersect at three points: literature
that borrows from the culture of chivalry (as a mode of
warfare, particularly in the epics); literature that in
turn gives shape to the aristocratic social culture that
surrounded the medieval warriors (as in the romances);
and literature that encompasses handbooks, or guides,
to chivalrous behavior in a more specifi c manner (in
the code books and the courtesy texts of the late Mid-
dle Ages). During the Renaissance, chivalry was a way114 CHIVALRY