Chivlary in Context: Law, Economics, Religion

Societies interested in long-term stability are well advised to promote harmony among their citizens. Evidence abounds that medieval culture was sensitive to strategies that would ensure balance and equilibrium in a variety of socia l circumstances. In Natural Conflict Resolution, Douglass H. Yarn cites numerous examples from medieval law and lore that demonstrate the contemporaneous emphasis on mutual cooperation. These include the story of Geoffrey and Edward, two brothers who fi ght but are reconciled during a "loveday" arbitration (54); the Anglo Saxon king Ethelred's decree that "a thane has two choices, love or the law, and he that chooses love is as much bound by that as he would be by a legal judgment" (love in this context means "amicable settlement") (59-60); and the decree of Henry I that "disputants are either 'brought together by love or separated by judgment'" (60). In an economic reading of Wynnere and Wastoure, Lois Roney argues that the poet evinces an aim "to teac h his audience what we regard today as basic economic theory, and then to persuade all its members . . . to adopt more sensible personal, institutional, and national economic attitudes and policies" (1072). In the poem, the king settles a nearly disastro us dispute between personified economic strategies and their adherents-averting a long, bloody, and wasteful conflict. In 'Of Good and Ill Repute,' Barbara Hanawalt notes the non-zero-sum game of peace-keeping played between police and innkeepers who, by the 1300's were held "responsible for the good behavior of their clients and forced . . . to stand surety for them if they committed an offense and did not appear for trial" (115, 111-18). 

In addition to economic and legal strategy, the didactic content of medieval romance reinforces codes of honor, loyalty, and courtesy-the central tenets of the chivalric ethos as it emerged from a combination of secular and religious influences in the medieval period. Maurice Keen points out that in the statutory relationship of knights and lords in France, "the knightship appears as a kind of petty nobility, whose military service to its lords was the quid pro quo [tit-for-tat] for its freedom from other irksome liabilities" (28). Blanch and Wasserman (citing A. W. B. Simpson) confirm that the quid pro quo was a highly formalized legal doctrine that established rules where "Having received the thing he had bargained for, the contr acting party should be compelled to pay for it." (1984, 599) This reciprocation at the level of legal and social organization was ideally meant to be exemplified by the knight's personal conduct, where "Chivalry's most profound influence lay . . . in set ting the seal of approbation on norms of conduct, recognized as noble when reproduced in individual act and style" (Keen 249). In behaving with "courtesy, loyalty and hardiness" (11), the knight's first duty was "to defend the faith of Christ . . . He mu st also defend his temporal lord, and protect the weak, women, widows, and orphans" (9). Huizinga notes that "chivalry was one of the great stimulants of medieval civilization, and however constantly the idea was belied in reality it served as a basis fo r international law, which is one of the indispensable safeguards for the community of mankind" (96). The ideal chivalric ethos of cooperation with kinsmen and generally courteous behavior mirrors the best of the prisoner's dilemma strategies discussed a bove. Chivalry is ideally cooperative or loyal, nice (courteous), provokable (retributive), forgiving, and transparent (easily recognized)-motivating the brave deeds that often serve as the only means of identifying knights who shield their identity behi nd heavy armor and inscrutable pseudonyms. Arthurian romance, written as chivalric culture thrived in the medieval period, didactically demonstrates the value of strong cooperative strategies and the dangers of both those that encourage defection or fail to discern and address its menace.

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