In this book Maurice Keen examines the significance of chivalry as a secular social ideal in the period from c. 1100 to c. 1500, and finds that historians have exaggerated both chivalry's early Christian dedication and its later secular decadence, and that it may be better described as an ethos in w[...]

This is a fascinating, three-dimensional picture of the politics, society and religion of medieval Europe, the age that had as its great theme the unity of Christendom. Maurice Keen examines tribal wars, the Crusades, the growth of trade and the shifting patterns of community life as villages grew i[...]