It is hard to know where to start with Knights in History and Legend, a book that contains much deserving praise, and yet is not without problems. Perhaps the best place to begin is by saying that "it does what it says on the tin." The publishers note that this "lavish book" was "written by a team of historians with specialized knowledge of the medieval period" and "is the most comprehensive book available on the subject." After careful reading, I must agree in general with both of these claims. It is indeed "resplendent with 400 beautiful color photographs, artworks and maps." Thanks to the team of consultants working under the guidance of Constance Brittain Bouchard, the content was for the most part accurate and detailed. And the book includes many different aspects of knightly history and legend, aspects which are certainly covered in much greater depth and detail elsewhere, but are nowhere brought together into one volume.
The contents are arranged thematically, with major parts devoted to Introducing Knights, The Life of a Knight, The Knight in History, The Cultural Legacy, and Reference. Each major part is further subdivided into sections and sub-sections, indicated by large italic headings and smaller capital headings respectively. Almost always, turning the page brings you to a new section or sub-section. Only the sections are listed in the Table of Contents; the sub-sections are not listed. Within the major parts, contents are again arranged thematically, although many sections proceeding according to a rough chronology. For example, one of the sections in The Life of a Knight is "Tournaments." Within this section, you find a main piece titled "Tournaments," as well as further sub-sections titled "Tournament Fighting" and "Attitudes towards Tournaments." The exception is The Knight in History, which proceeds chronologically for the most part.
There are color plates on virtually every page, many of them quite large and detailed, and all captioned. Captions almost always include the date the image was created, rather than simply the date of the event the image is portraying. Almost always, captions and text complement and do not contradict each other--it may seem odd that I call this out for praise, but with the number of captions in this book, and the number of hands involved in the layout, I find it noteworthy. An effort was made to link images with text whenever possible, so that the reader can see whatever was just described. Additionally, particularly delightful quotes and text boxes calling attention to specific anecdotes or issues are sprinkled throughout the text. For example, in the sub-section "Castles and Warfare," we are treated to the classic "once more unto the breach" quote from Shakespeare's Henry V, while a separate text box briefly relays the entertaining story of English knight William Marmion and his gilded helm.
Bouchard and her team are certainly to be commended for including sections on warrior aristocracies in Asian cultures, as well as sections dealing with the cultural legacy of chivalry in literature, film, television, war games, and honorific orders. Those sections of the text are admittedly the least fleshed out--but this is not overly surprising, and easily understandable (though perhaps regrettable from a commercial standpoint).
With a book such as this, which is clearly intended for a popular audience, one expects to find gross simplifications that verge on inaccuracy. Overall, this is not the case with Knights. Most of the text is clear and concise, while remaining accurate and sensitive to various details and scholarly issues. Short primary source quotes are used judiciously and to great effect, bringing certain key points to life. Additionally, primary sources are identified by author, approximate date, and title in English, allowing particularly keen readers to easily track down the full sources on Amazon. There are, however, a few exceptions to the general rule, particularly in The Knight in History part. Extremely heavy emphasis is placed on English, French and Anglo-Norman history and knighthood, with minimal treatment of Iberian knighthood, and no discussion of knighthood in the German States or the Italian peninsula, which regrettably promotes the idea that knighthood was fairly uniform (an idea elsewhere explicitly, and rightly, dismissed). When describing the origins of the knightly class, the role of Germanic tribal structures is emphasized, while the contribution of Roman social and military structures is played down. The church is pretty uniformly depicted as considering knightly violence "an affront to the ideals of Christianity"--which is true to a degree, yet fails to take into account the fact that members of the Church actively promoted knightly violence which they deemed acceptable.
Perhaps the best way to illustrate these types of problems is to look in greater detail at the extensive section on the crusading movement. The text plays up the "pious" religious motivations of crusaders and popes alike and downplays more complicated truths, like the fact that the crusades must be understood in the context of a papacy seeking greater temporal power. The text is never exactly wrong, but it definitely emphasizes certain ideas more than others. For example, it notes that "crusades were also declared in the twelfth century to protect Christians from abuse by pagan authorities in the Baltic area," omitting to mention that whether Christians were actually being abused is doubtful at best, and that the Baltic crusades became the stage for systematic Germanic political and economic expansion. We also are not informed of the way in which participating in a Baltic crusading campaign, or reysa, became a sort of standard chivalric holiday, complete with feasts, medals, and ready-and-waiting pagan "enemies" to smite. In another example from the same paragraph, the text rather disingenuously notes that "one late thirteenth-century pope even preached a crusade against some of his own cardinals"-- suggesting that this was an exception, and omitting the fact that a great number of popes preached crusades against Christian political adversaries. And certain word choices are open to various interpretations. For example: "The first three official crusades were marked by a zealous enthusiasm for the cause, with large numbers of crusaders determined to come to the aid of the Christians of Jerusalem. Unfortunately, not all of the campaigns were fated to succeed." I enthusiastically support empathizing with the subjects of historical study, and moreover, I'm sure the word "unfortunately" was chosen simply for rhetorical reasons; nonetheless, the wording could be read as an endorsement of the crusaders' aims.
The other historical topic that I felt was not given its due was the question of courtly love and its relationship with chivalry. The main text adopts a rather traditional view early on and draws a hard and fast line between "chivalry" and "courtly love," stating: "For chivalry, at its root, remained a set of ideals for warriors in warfare: it was developed by an applicable to men who fought. It is essential to keep this in mind in order to separate myth, or perhaps elements of the broader courtly culture, from chivalrous reality." I was somewhat surprised to see this opinion voiced, since to my mind James Schultz has demonstrated precisely why fighting males may have been interested in courtly literature. [1] More immediately problematic, however, is the fact that the caption on the same page states "Courtly love was an intrinsic part of chivalric ideals"--an assertion that would seem to directly contradict the main text, as indeed does the fact that we encounter a sub-section titled "A Knight and his Lady" later in the book. That section ends with the rather bald claim that "in all these [courtly] storylines, the poets display a certain distrust of women, even while they agreed that knights ought to serve them. The ladies were doubtless just happy to be offered whatever service was available." As much as I recognize the need for concise treatment of complicated themes in a work such as this, this nonetheless hinted at a lack of comfort with, and knowledge about, gender relations among the nobility and in chivalric literature.
I was extremely excited to see a lengthy reference section pointing readers towards other texts, but upon closer examination was a bit disappointed. Two works I consider essential when dealing with knighthood and medieval society are completely missing: Robert Bartlett's The Making of Europe and R. I. Moore's The First European Revolution. Nothing by Helen Nicholson, Christopher Tyerman or Norman Housley is mentioned--I would have expected to see at least Nicholson's Medieval Warfare, Tyerman's God's War and Housley's The Later Crusades. I realize that no reference list will satisfy all scholars--at least, not unless it contains all works written at all times!--yet the absence of these texts was striking to me. Certainly other readers, with different areas of expertise and interest, may interpret the reference section according to other criteria.
Two larger points remain to be addressed: the organization and accessibility of the volume, and its intended audience. First, while the general thematic organization is sound and understandable, its execution has resulted in many topics--knight's horses, or feudal relations, to name two examples--being discussed in multiple places, although not all of those places are signposted for the reader. This is both repetitive for a general reader ("I thought we already did horses!") and frustrating for a reader who might want to be able to find everything on a specific topic in one place. To continue with my two examples, there is a section titled "The Noble Steed" listed in the Table of Contents, at page 22. Well and good. However, other substantial sub-sections that are not apparent unless you read the whole book include "Horse Armor" (82) and "The Warhorse" (98). (This of course does not include the numerous paragraphs devoted to horses throughout.) You can eventually find your way to "Horse Armor" by looking for "horses" in the index, but you won't find "The Warhorse" unless you explicitly search the index for "warhorses." As for feudal relations, we are given a brief yet extremely helpful overview-- including a text box dealing with the scholarly debate over the term "feudalism"--on pages 15-16, in the section "The Origins of Knights." We learn much more, however, in the sub-section titled "Lords and Vassals" (162). However, "Lords and Vassals" is not listed in the Table of Contents, it is not mentioned on pages 15-16, and if you look up "feudalism" in the index, you are only pointed towards page 16--you wouldn't know "Lords and Vassals" was there at all unless you plowed through the whole book.
Second, after having spent a good deal of time with the book, and despite all the things I admire about it, I still don't know exactly whom the book is for. It is clearly not intended for any sort of academic audience, not even for scholars in other disciplines or undergraduates, above all because it lacks notes of any kind. Thus, the obvious conclusion is that a popular audience is the target. But which popular audience, exactly? The glossy and dramatic cover, along with the fact that the text is loaded with pictures and maps, might make you think it was appropriate for precocious children and young adults. However, complicated passages (like the one below) are scattered here and there, and make me wonder if it would indeed be right for an 11-year old nephew: "Even though many knights' fiefs were quite small, the possession of land came with legal jurisdiction over the peasants who worked the land. This element of formal authority was the reason for the upward assimilation of knightly status into the realm formerly occupied solely by the aristocracy." Perhaps, then, it is intended for the educated adult reader, the type of reader who avidly consumes Oxford Illustrated Histories. Yet the treatment of various topics is not, to my mind at least, sophisticated enough to be suitable for the armchair historian. And arguing against both potential audiences is the simple fact that this book is massive--almost 10 inches by 12 inches, and pretty darn heavy (just under 4.5 pounds). I had to read it on my lap, and certainly a younger reader would find it extremely unwieldy, just as an older reader might find it unsuitable for comfortable evening reading, and certainly would never stick it in his or her luggage to read on vacation or during an arduous flight. I can only imagine this book sitting on a coffee table, with its spine barely cracked, and that seems a shame to me, given the considerable effort that went into it.
Notes:
1. James A. Schultz, Courtly Love, the Love of Courtliness, and the History of Sexuality (Chicago, 2006), especially pages 173-88.