![]() The fall of Rome had also made many of her laws recede into the distance, slowly Roman statute law was notably more misogynist than the customary law of the tribal groups the Empire had conquered. In fact, it is probably true to say that women in the Middle Ages, especially after about the eleventh and up to the fifteenth centuries, enjoyed a level of relative freedom not equalled until the twentieth. Modern people all too often view the Middle Ages through distorting mirrors and one of the most distorting is the idea of medieval women’s position. Added to that was the change in peacetime culture, particularly in England and France, with women becoming more prominent again, able to provide a guiding hand. This was real youth culture.īut as time went on, and the disorder of the post-Roman period, the invasions, and the Norman adventures receded, and prosperity and peace descended in Europe, due to some kind of balance being precariously achieved, more attention was being paid to the fact that the youth had not only to be kept in line, but also to be given a channel for their energies which would make them both more productive, and more disciplined. ![]() ![]() The often wild energy, idealism and exaltation that characterises medieval culture comes from that demographic fact. The Middle Ages was a young person’s period though many people did live on into old age, the average age of death for a woman was thirty-three for a man, especially a knight, it was under thirty. That they were more often than not is indisputable a combination of young man’s energy, a lack of efficiently centralised civic or moral teaching(the State did not really exist, and the Church struggled mightily to tame the warriors for centuries), and the fact that on a horse you could quickly get away from the scene of your crimes, mixed with a kind of carte blanche, a blind eye turned to your hi-jinks by the man–or woman–who paid your wages when you were at war with their rivals or enemies(but cut you loose when they didn’t need you, leaving you to fend for yourself), made for quite a potent little cocktail of public nuisance. That is, these mounted men were regarded as tyrannical bullies, delinquents and pests. The way they were regarded by many people is perhaps best summed up in the German proverb, Er will Ritter an mir werden ie, he wants to play the knight over me, ride roughshod over me. Mounted men-at-arms–knights, in the English word, which by the way derives from the same root as knife, referring to weapons–could be a damn nuisance in the early and later Middle Ages. ![]() And its ideals encompassed both sexes, actively.Īs the French-derived term chivalry indicates–it is originally from chevalerie, meaning horsemanship, literally–it came about as a means of codifying and disciplining a mounted order of military types. Isn’t that a bloke’s thing? Isn’t it do with being a man-at-arms, with strapping on armour, and sallying forth into the wildwood on your horse, your lady’s token on your arm, to right wrongs and do great deeds? Isn’t the only role of the woman in chivalry to be the inspirer, the Muse of a paragon of the knightly virtues? Well, yes–and no. I’m republishing the essay today and hope readers find it interesting–and with some relevance to our times as well!Ĭhivalry. The trilogy was inspired by the shadowy life and extraordinary work of 12th century writer Marie de France, one of the writers mentioned in this essay. I’ve always been interested in the Middle Ages, especially the chivalric period between the 12th and 15th centuries, and wrote this essay some years ago, after the publication of my historical fantasy trilogy, The Lay Lines Trilogy, released in an omnibus edition as Forest of Dreams.
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