History Question – are knights of the middle age chivalry-ous?
Alyx’s response was a good one. One thing though, Historians generally consider Ancient History in the West to end with the Fall of Rome. The period you are talking about is usually referred to as the Medieval period. And your spelling is close: Chivalrous. I think perhaps you could build on this and use a three step approach, your first paragraph describing who they were and what their chivalric code was. The second could investigate how literature has portrayed this time. Sources like the Song of Roland, Wagner’s Parsifal, and Sir Thomas Malory’s L’Morte d’Arthur (Death of Arthur) would be useful. The third could investigate the actions history records of the knight’s actual behavior. I will include a link to Eyewitness to History. There is an excellent first person account of the fall of Jerusalem in 1099, not the best example of what we imagine chivalry to be. Click on Middle Ages/Renaissance and look for Fall of Jerusalem 1099.
