An encounter between a warring knight and the world of learning could seem a paradox. It is nonetheless related with the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, an essential intellectual movement for western ...history. Knights not only fought in battles, but also moved in sophisticated courts. Knights were interested in Latin classics and reading, and writing poetry. Supportive of “jongleurs” and minstrels, they enjoyed literary conversations with clerics who would attempt to reform their behaviour, which was often brutal. These lettered warriors, while improving their culture, learned to repress their own violence and were initiated to courtesy: selective language, measured gestures, elegance in dress, and manners at the table. Their association with women, who were often learned, became more gallant. A revolution of thought occurred among lay elites who, in contact with clergy, began to use their weapons for common welfare. This new conduct was a tangible sign of Medievalist society's leap forward towards modernity. This monograph contains a great deal of detailed information about the attitudes towards learning and written culture among members of the nobility in different parts of Europe in the Middle Ages.
Charisma—a special gift from God that enables some believers to perform prodigious feats such as prophecy, preaching, pardon, and miracles, for the good of the community—was originally conceptualized ...by St ...
The expression 'political culture' is in this essay in the narrow sense. It is strictly limited to the merely intellectual creations that, written down, serve to take power, to keep it and to impose ...it. The wider anthropological definition of 'political culture', which would embrace all the rules and behaviours by which man seeks to exercise power in society, is therefore abandoned. The texts helping medieval rulers to display their power and strengthen their domination are all too often 'propaganda'. This term certainly deserves to be used with caution, free from the most modern connotations that equate it with the highly sophisticated and technological methods used by totalitarian regimes to impose a counter-truth on the masses It would be wrong, however, to reject it on the pretext that, as claimed the philosopher Jürgen Habermas, only printing and the periodical press create a 'public sphere' where debate is possible. It seems excessive to assert that ancient and medieval emperors, kings and princes did not 'propagandize' by displaying the visual symbols of their domination or by telling the Story of their ancestors. Furthermore, it Seems difficult to dispense with the notion of propaganda for the Middle Ages, where the court becomes so often a centre for issuing messages, favourable to its master, towards the periphery of the castles and lordships of aristocratic warriors in order to obtain their adhesion to a political agenda. In short, even before modernity, propaganda was an integral part of medieval political culture.
This monograph - which was very well received when originally published in France - contains a great deal of detailed information about the attitudes towards learning and written culture among ...members of the nobility in different parts of Europe in the Middle Ages.
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