Product Description: The medieval code of chivalry demanded that warrior elites demonstrate fierce courage in battle, display prowess with weaponry, and avenge any strike against their honor. They were also required to be devout Christians. How, then, could knights pledge fealty to the Prince of Peace, who enjoined the faithful to turn the other cheek rather than seek vengeance and who taught that the meek, rather than glorious fighters in tournaments, shall inherit the earth? By what logic and language was knighthood valorized?In Holy Warriors, Richard Kaeuper argues that while some clerics sanctified violence in defense of the Holy Church, others were sorely troubled by chivalric practices in everyday life...read more

Product Description: Violence was endemic in the medieval world, to an extent most modern people find shocking. Violence was part and parcel of the public world of institutions (church, state, chivalry) and the private world of households. In an age of dynamic expansion it was present everywhere, and contemporary response to it was contradictory: it was both wrong and at the same time a regulatory feature of society...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product 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 ideas around him, what he rejected or ignored, and what he added from his experience in camp, court, and campaign...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Ranging broadly between the years 1000 and 1400, Richard Kaeuper assesses the impact of war and lawmaking on the evolution of the royal governments of England and France. From the economic and political costs of war and the development of royal justice, to the crown's attempts to control private violence and the relationship between public opinion and government action, his book provides thorough coverage of issues of central importance in late medieval history...read more