medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
some here might at first think (as i did) that the book under review here is
tangential to med-rel matters.
however, buried within it is the phrase, "Religion was an important part of a
knight's life," so that is clearly not the case.
c
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Received: Thu, 23 Feb 2012 10:04:05 AM EST
From: The Medieval Review <[log in to unmask]>
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Subject: TMR 12.02.23 Aurell, Le chevalier lettré (Livingstone)
Aurell, Martin. <i>Le chevalier lettré: Savior et conduite de
l'aristocratie aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles.</i> Fayard: Paris, 2011. Pp.
540. EUR 26. ISBN: 978-2-213-66233-6.
Reviewed by Amy Livingstone
Wittenberg University
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Could medieval knights read the tales of their exploits so vividly
brought to life in medieval literature? This question has long
intrigued scholars. While most would likely admit that knights and
nobles had some degree of functional literacy, many would balk at the
idea of a "literate" or educated knighthood. In this book, Martin
Aurell argues persuasively that knights could not only read and write,
but that they were "lettered." In doing so, <i>Le chevalier
lettré</i> offers a corrective to the recent scholarly trend that
focuses on the inherent violence of the medieval knighthood. Aurell
suggests that the hesitancy to accept the literacy of medieval knights
stems from how "literacy" is or was defined. If a clerical standard
is employed then literacy would entail a sophisticated understanding
and penning of Latin texts, which would significantly limit the number
of knights able to achieve such a standard (97). If, however,
literacy is measured by functional competence in Latin or a command of
the vernacular, as Aurell proposes, significantly more members of the
knighthood would be deemed "literate."
With this volume, Aurell aims to trace the "historical sociology" of
knowledge and learning among knights and nobles. Not satisfied with
what the knights knew, Aurell also examines how the ideals and values
inherent in the literature of the time actually shaped the behavior of
medieval elites. One of the prominent themes of this book is the
interplay between clerical society and the knights. Building on the
work of C. Stephen Jaeger, Aurell argues that the clergy played a
formative role not only in educating knights but in molding their
behavior. Indeed, the "courtliness" that Aurell sees as transforming
knights from warriors into thoughtful and learned members of their
society was founded in the schools of the twelfth century and the
clerics who taught there. Aurell's analysis of both literary and
clerical sources is both insightful and deft. Instead of reiterating
what the prescriptive clerical sources say about knights, he is able
to tease out the "reality" behind the sources to give them a human
face to show how ideas played an important role in the lives of
medieval knights.
The book is organized into four rather long chapters (each is well
over a hundred pages), with each chapter subdivided into various
topics. The book starts at the very beginning of a knight's literacy:
his education. In this first chapter, entitled <i>Chevalerie et
"Clergie"</i>, Aurell begins immediately to develop his theme of
integration between clergy and knights. He starts his analysis by
considering how young children were educated at home. Informed by
recent scholarship, Aurell brings to life the formative role that
mothers played in the education of their children. In particular, he
argues that they were responsible for teaching their children the
rudiments of literacy: the alphabet (56, 74). Educated knights have
long been assumed to be the exception, rather than the rule. Yet as
Aurell demonstrates, advice manuals aimed at providing guidance for
educating a young aristocrat--one even penned by Peter Abelard
himself--suggests that medieval parents were concerned that their
children receive some sort of education. While a young knight might
begin his education at his mother's knee, most went to monastic
schools where they interacted with the clergy and often formed
lifelong associations with them.
Having established that knights were educated, Aurell examines the
question of a knight's literacy. He cites the existence of vernacular
advice literature and manuals on proper aristocratic or knightly
behavior as proof that they could read. Otherwise why would there be
manuals crafted specifically for their use? But Aurell goes one step
further and provides individual examples of literary accomplishment.
While the literate knight might have been more exceptional in the
twelfth century, by the thirteenth century the literary and
bureaucratic output of medieval courts suggests many more men of the
knightly rank were both literate and educated. Indeed, centralized
monarchies required men who were literate to help them govern. When
viewed <i>ensemble</i>, the evidence persuades that knights were
educated to varying degrees in the second half of the twelfth century
and that by the thirteenth century an illiterate knight was the
exception rather than the rule.
Aurell proceeds next to examine the relationship between knights and
literary output. He begins his analysis at court, where he argues
that the military strongholds that knights once called home had
transformed into a palace, thus framing a change in knights from
strictly warriors to producers and consumers of literature. Using the
actual setting in which these stories took place, the book then takes
up those who performed at court and what they wrote. Central to the
career of the <i>jongleurs</i> and the distribution of their poems
were the <i>salons</i> provided by medieval noblewomen. He believes
that <i>jongleurs</i> integrated real-life scenarios involving women,
who were often their patrons, into their poems (130-33). The book
next turns to the professional writers and performers themselves.
Aurell demonstrates that these men and women came from a diverse
social background and that they were also a multi-talented group,
writers but also actors and dancers. This section provides a lively
description of the spaces and performances of medieval <i>chansons</i>
which give the reader a deeper sense of social context. To conclude
this discussion, Aurell returns to his theme of the intersection
between clerical and secular culture. Based on the negative
impressions of a few clerics, the clergy has often been cast as
hostile and critical of courtly literature--asserting that it led to
the debasement of the morals and spirituality of those at court.
Aurell, however, suggests that this relationship was less oppositional
than previously assumed.
Now that the stage has been set, Aurell introduces the main characters
and a key component to his argument for knightly literacy: knights who
were authors. The increase in lay authors, particularly in Latin, he
argues, means that more and more knights were being educated at
university and cathedral schools. Three genres of knightly literary
expression in particular are examined: <i>chansons</i>, sagas, and
memoirs of the crusades. Aurell provides an impressive array of
knightly authors. Indeed, he estimates that half of the troubadours
may have been of aristocratic background, most concentrated in the
south of Europe. As well as songs of love, the crusades also provided
a generation of knights with the opportunity for self-expression. One
of the great strengths of this analysis is that Aurell includes
examples from all over Europe--as well as all ranks within the
nobility.
Aurell, however, does not confine his discussion to only male members
of the knightly class; he also examines the education and literacy of
their sisters, mothers and daughters. Like knights, he argues that
elite women were educated at their mother's knee and then parish
schools or convents. Aristocratic girls, he asserts, learned to read.
Evidence of this literacy can be found in the medieval literature
itself where women are often portrayed as reading individually and to
an audience. Reading was also an inherent part of women's piety and
prayer. Aurell believes that women could also write. He cites the
correspondence of aristocratic women, as well as authors like Marie de
France. The literacy of elite women has garnered much scholarly
attention and Aurell's inclusion of female literacy both recognizes
the contributions of this research and emphasizes the important role
that women played as patrons and practitioners in the written culture
of the Central Middle Ages.
The third and final chapter of this book returns to Aurell's theme of
the influence of the clergy on their secular/knightly brethren. He
argues that the clergy had a "civilizing" impact on the values of the
knight. To develop this argument, Aurell delves into four topics:
war, manners, love and religion. Although clerics abhorred the
violent preoccupations of hunting and the tournament, they attempted
to school knights as to when violence was appropriate: in service to a
monarch, in defense of the church or to protect the poor, culminating
in the call for crusade. Aurell argues that the clergy targeted
knights through their various treatises in order to shape their
behavior, which he believes they did. Being able to read led knights
to become more "Christianized," indeed civilized. These efforts
intersected with ideas of proper manners and courtesy, as exemplified
in the practice of chivalry by knights toward non-combatants and in
times of peace. While Aurell dismisses the supposition that "courtly
love" was ever a reality, he does argue that love modified knights'
behavior in regard to their interactions with women. Love, as well as
the importance of women, also filters into Aurell's examination of the
knights' piety. He draws a parallel between the worship of the Virgin
Mary and impact of women on the knights' view of love. Religion was
an important part of a knight's life, as evident in the many private
chapels they built in their castles. Knightly piety is also central
to Aurell's argument for their literacy. Because they were able to
read, they were able to interact with clerical writings on a range of
topics, allowing their piety to become more theologically informed and
nuanced. Through analysis of piety from the mid-twelfth to the
thirteenth centuries, Aurell is able to prove that literacy both
affected and fundamentally changed how knights understood and
practiced their religion.
Aurell is successful in demonstrating the impact that transformations
of the twelfth century had on both the education and behavior of
medieval knights. The intellectual renaissance meant that more were
educated, thus enabling them to read and write in the vernacular and
even Latin. The development of centralized governments that employed
law and bureaucracies meant that access to power lay through literacy.
The developing sense of "class solidarity" reinforced the expectation
that men and women of this class should be able to read and write.
The synthesis of these elements resulted in a new kind of knight, one
that was nonetheless a warrior, but who could control his violent
behavior, behave circumspectly toward women, and participate in the
more gentle pastimes of court life, many of which were based in
reading, writing and recitation.
<i>Le chevalier lettré</i>is a thoughtful and comprehensive
contribution to the study of literacy and knighthood. One of its
strengths is its inclusivity: it offers a truly Pan-European
consideration of the literate knight. Previous scholarship has tended
to focus on the "heartland" of feudal Europe: France, England and
Germany. Aurell, however, clearly sees medieval Europe far more
broadly and includes examples of literate knights from all parts of
Europe, including Scandinavia, Poland and medieval Rus. For instance,
he examines the sagas of Snorri Sturlson, the encylopedists from
Italy, the <i>minnesingers</i> from Germany and crusade memoirs from
Spain in conjunction with the southern troubadours and the northern
French trouvère. This emphasis is both commendable and persuasive as
recent scholarship has pointed out how interconnected these areas were
through religion, politics and culture, thus pushing our framing of
medieval "Europe" further east. Taken individually, the authors of
such works could be dismissed as an individual exception. But when
threaded together, a new pattern emerges: the European phenomenon of
the educated and literate knight. Aurell also includes analysis of
elite women writers and the impact of women on the education and
conduct of the knights. Influenced by feminist research, Aurell
treats women as agents of change and active participants, rather than
passive objects of knightly admiration or as patrons. He interweaves
their influence throughout his analysis; from the mother who taught
her sons the alphabet to ladies at court who became the subject of
knightly literature.
At the same time Aurell casts his net widely, he is also able to
compliment his broad scope with individual examples. Examinations of
the relationship between knights and literature have tended to take
one of two approaches: global or singular. A strength of Aurell's
analysis is that he has been able to combine the two. He highlights
individuals who demonstrate knightly literacy, but at the same time
places them in a broad geographical or literary context. The analysis
of knightly piety demonstrates this balance. While there are many
excellent works examining the collective piety of knights and nobles,
Aurell seeks to provide a more personal view on how knights understood
their God. He delves into how they worshipped, where they worshipped
(private chapels) and what images or religious artifacts had religious
resonance for them. Another virtue of Aurell's analysis is his
creativity in finding ways to provide detail about the relationship
between knights and literacy/literature. The section "Des châteaux
transformés en palais" is one of the most innovative in the book.
Here Aurell uses the descriptions in the romances and poems to
reconstruct the physical space of the court and palace. Using this
literary archeology allows him to bring to life the spaces inhabited
by the knights and ladies who attended court and contributed to the
production of courtly literature.
This is an extremely rich book. Although its breadth and detail are
strengths, they can also be a drawback. Sometimes the details make it
hard to appreciate the whole or to see how the myriad of pieces fit
together. A more assertive central thesis and/or shorter chapters
might have mitigated this problem. Yet even though it is sometimes
difficult to digest the entirety of this book, this does not detract
from its overall quality. <i>Le chevalier lettré: Savior et conduite
de l'aristocratie aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles</i> will be of use and
interest to those studying the nobility, the clergy, and literature,
but also the history of culture and education. This is an important
contribution: creative, inclusive, detailed and persuasive. It
demonstrates how intellectual movements, often dismissed as having a
limited impact on anyone outside of the cloister, did in fact shape
the lives of medieval knights. While other works have discussed
literacy (Michael Clanchy's seminal work comes to mind) or conduct (as
exemplified by an extensive literature on the lives of knights), this
book combines both to provide a rich and penetrating picture of how
knights learned, what they learned, how this shaped their behavior and
piety, and ultimately had a larger impact on medieval society.
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