Splendor of Knighthood

Knights were typically members of the lower nobility hoping to rise through military service and who characteristically fought from horseback. During peacetime, knights displayed their martial skills in medieval tournaments, a mixture of spectacle and controlled violence, in which knights were usually injured and sometimes killed. These ranged from grand events to duels and brawls that were sparked by an insult to one party’s honor. As heraldry developed, knights became identifiable by their individual coats of arms. Once the chivalric ideal emerged in the High Middle Ages, knights became symbols for a code of conduct that was defined by Christian morality. The Crusades helped to create the ideal of the Christian knight. A Crusader knight or one joining a monastic military order like the Templars would paint over their coat of arms, replacing it with a simple cross as a sign that they were abandoning their personal ambitions in order to serve Christ. Various figures, both historical and mythical, influenced the image of a knight, and include Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and St. George. The mythical King Arthur and his Knights of the Roundtable were inspirations for stories of the very real Charlemagne (742–814) and his Paladins, who were mythicized versions of Charlemagne’s best knights.
This collection of ten pages from splendidly illuminated manuscripts gives an overview of imagery associated with the ideal of the chivalric knight:
1. The Patron Saint: Michael
Apocalypse, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
France, ca. 1320

1. The Ideal of the Knight: St. George
   Breviary of the Duke of Bedford, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
   Paris, ca. 1425–1435

2. The Feudal Lord: King and Emperor Otto III
   Gospels of Otto III, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich
   Reichenau, ca. 1000

3. The Knight and his Armor: King David
   Psalter, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna
   France, ca. 1280

4. The Ancient Model: Alexander the Great
   Alexander Romance, Bodleian Library, Oxford
   Flanders, ca. 1338–1344

5. Tradition and Present: Caesar Crosses the Rubicon
   Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César et faits des Romains, Musée du Louvre, Paris
   France, ca. 1460

6. The Courtly Epic: Tristan and Isolde
   Roman de la Poire, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
   France, ca. 1275

7. The Battle for the Holy Land: Crusaders before Jerusalem
   Burchardus Teutonicus: Descriptio Terrae Sanctae, Biblioteca del Seminario, Padua
   Upper Italy, late–13th century

8. The Knightly Poet: Hartmann von Au
   Great Heidelberg Book of Songs (Codex Manesse), Universitätsbibliothek, Heidelberg
   Zürich, early–14th century

9. Autumn of Chivalry: Mary of Burgundy and Maximilian I
   Hours of Mary of Burgundy, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna
   Ghent, ca. 1467–1480