Historical archive

European chivalry: the ideal knight and the real one

How the Church, poets and knights themselves built an ethic for armed men, and how far practice followed it.

Full plate armour in the Maximilian style, early 16th century — Field Armor in Maximilian Style — unknown maker, c. 1510–15. Cleveland Museum of Art, CC0 (public domain).

The story

Chivalry comes from the French chevalier, a man who fights on horseback. Around the year 1000, as local lords fought endless small wars, the Church tried to limit the violence with the Peace of God, which protected clergy, peasants and their goods, and the Truce of God, which banned fighting on certain days. These were early attempts to give armed men rules.

From the twelfth century, poets such as Chrétien de Troyes told stories of King Arthur’s knights, mixing prowess, loyalty, courtesy and love. Knights wrote too: Ramon Llull’s Book of the Order of Chivalry (around 1275) and Geoffroi de Charny’s Book of Chivalry (around 1350) describe the ideal knight as brave, generous, pious and loyal. In the same centuries masters such as Liechtenauer and Fiore wrote down how knights actually fought.

Practice was harsher. Courtesy was owed mainly to other nobles, who could be captured and ransomed. In the Hundred Years’ War, armies led by famous knights carried out chevauchées, raids that burned villages and crops on purpose. The tidy “code of chivalry” with numbered commandments often quoted today was written by the French scholar Léon Gautier in 1884; the nineteenth century reinvented chivalry as it did bushido.

What the tradition holds

A knight must be brave, loyal, generous and courteous.
Strength exists to protect the Church, the weak, widows and orphans.
Prowess is earned through constant training and hardship.

What history and science show

Llull, Charny and the fight books are genuine medieval texts; the ideals were real and widely read.
There was no single code; chivalry meant different things in different places and centuries.
Records of war show that ideals and practice were often far apart, especially for non-nobles.

Myth and fact

Myth

Knights followed a written code of chivalry with ten commandments.

That list comes from Léon Gautier’s book La Chevalerie (1884), a nineteenth-century summary, not a medieval rule.

A note of respect

The ideal of using strength to protect others still inspires people. Knowing its real history makes it a choice, not a legend.

Images: public-domain or CC0 works credited under each picture, or original WABUKAN ink illustrations. Panels: the story told in numbered comic boxes.

Sources

Chivalry — Wikipedia — en.wikipedia.org
Peace and Truce of God — Wikipedia — en.wikipedia.org
Geoffroi de Charny — Wikipedia — en.wikipedia.org
Ramon Llull — Wikipedia — en.wikipedia.org
Chevauchée — Wikipedia — en.wikipedia.org
Léon Gautier — Wikipedia — en.wikipedia.org
Field Armor in Maximilian Style — Cleveland Museum of Art — clevelandart.org

Cite / use this content

You may quote and share this page with a link to WABUKAN. Suggested citation:

WABUKAN 和武館, «European chivalry: the ideal knight and the real one», https://wabukan.com/crenca-cavalaria-europeia (accessed 2026-10-30).

Using our content