The book of chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny

by Richard W. Kaeuper

Charny was a knight who lived the chivalric life for nearly two decades in a manner thought ideal by his contemporaries, dying appropriately in battle at Poitiers in 1356. He was also the first documented owner of the Shroud of Turin. This volume establishes the cultural context in which Charny lived in the first section and sets forth in the second the French text of Charny's fascinating work alongside an English translation, with full critical apparatus. 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 form his experience in camp, court and campaign. Geoffroi de Charny was one of the quintessential figures of his age, with honors and praise bestowed upon him from both sid