Why read The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny?

Book cover of The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny: Text, Context, and Translation

Book description

The Book of Chivalry is the most pragmatic of all surviving chivalric manuals. Written at the height of the Hundred Years War, it includes the essential commonplaces of knighthood in the mid-fourteenth century and gives a close-up view of what one knight in particular absorbed of the medieval world of…

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European history

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

David Green

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Often said to have been in decline in the later middle ages, this treatise, by a French knight, written for King John II’s Company of the Star, shows that chivalry, although under great pressure, remained a hugely powerful ethos which continued to shape aristocratic life in the fourteenth century. The work details the trials and travails of a life in arms and the ‘worth’ of various military enterprises. Rather poignantly, Charny died at the battle of Poitiers (1356) while bearing the Oriflamme, the French banner.

From David's list on The best books on the late medieval crisis: war and plague in Britain and France.