8 - Chivalry, Literature and Political Culture

Summary

Besides individual concern for the health of the soul, numerous other factors helped to sow enthusiasm for the physical contest with the infidel. According to Froissart, talk of royal crusades in the early 1330s was warmly received by warlike men because they had nothing better to do at the time. The desire to cross swords in a rewarding cause is evident throughout the period, when western soldiery, toughened by fighting in France and elsewhere, became swollen in numbers and in need of an outlet for its energy. This violent and opportunistic quality can be highlighted ample times, whether in the career of John Holand, who became implicated in crusade plans on three separate occasions, including as Captain of the Roman Church in Italy, as retinue leader on John of Gaunt's Castile expedition, and as an independent campaigner in Hungary and Bohemia, or in the more obscure careers of men like John Hampton of Mortimer, who apparently served in the Iberian crusades for pay. Diversity of motive was nothing intrinsically new. What provided a large measure of cohesion among participants, however, were the various codes of behaviour and expectation held up for emulation in the tenets of chivalry, and the pressures of prestige and competition between men. Court pageantry and ceremony, imaginative literature, myth, military competition, the expectations of lineage, the decorative arts and patterns of social advancement all spoke to crusading's higher calling, instilling in knights an ethos of admiration and material response.