1. Question: should a man always open the door for a woman?
Is chivalry dead?
Is chivalry good or bad for women? (Protecting women vs. limiting women)

2. Code of chivalry (detail)
To fear God and maintain His Church
To serve the liege lord in valour and faith
To protect the weak and defenceless
To give succour to widows and orphans
To refrain from the wanton giving of offence
To live by honour and for glory
To despise pecuniary reward
To fight for the welfare of all
To obey those placed in authority
To guard the honour of fellow knights
To eschew unfairness, meanness and deceit
To keep faith
At all times to speak the truth
To persevere to the end in any enterprise begun
To respect the honour of women
Never to refuse a challenge from an equal
Never to turn the back upon a foe

3. Code of chivalry (simple)
Serve God
Serve his Lord
Serve his Lady
How do you serve God? Be a “good” Christian
How do you serve your Lord? Fight for him
How do you serve your Lady? Show her your love (next slide)

4. tournaments A Knight’s Tale

5.
Medieval love song

7. Do we have a modern equivalent?
Jason Derulo, “Marry Me”
Justin Timberlake, “Mirrors”
Ten Things I Hate About You
Top Gun

8. Is chivalry dead?
…should it be?

9. The role of women in medieval europe

10. Church views on women Could not become priests
Women could become abbesses (leaders of a convent) but they only had authority over the other women in the convent
"No matter whether the most blessed Virgin Mary stands higher, and is also more illustrious, than all the apostles together, it was still not to her, but to them, that the Lord entrusted the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven.”
- Pope Innocent III (1210)

11. Middle/upper class women
Two options:
Marriage and child-rearing
Join a convent
Only opportunity for most women to learn to read and write and play a more active role in society (religious society)
Working women
Midwifery (helping to birth babies)
Helping husbands with the business
Spinning (creating textiles)

12. Lower class women Equality (a.k.a. shared poverty)
"Burdened with children and landlords' rent;
What they can put aside from what they make spinning they spend on housing,
Also on milk and meal to make porridge with
To sate their children who cry out for food
And they themselves also suffer much hunger,
And woe in wintertime, and waking up nights
To rise on the bedside to rock the cradle,
Also to card and comb wool, to patch and to wash,
To rub flax and reel yarn and to peel rushes
That it is pity to describe or show in rhyme
The woe of these women who live in huts;”
(from Piers Plowman, a medieval poem)

13. Two (awesome) exceptions
Eleanor of Aquitaine
Joan of Arc
Queen of France
Went on the Second Crusade to “tend the wounded” dressed in armor and carrying lances
Queen of England
Mother to three kings (King Richard I and King John)
Led sons in rebellion against King (imprisoned for 15 years)
Cemented marriage alliances across Europe
French peasant who led the army to victories during the Hundred Years’ War after seeing a vision from God
Burned at the stake for heresy at the age of 19

14. Women begin to break the mold
Near the end of the Middle Ages ( ), women begin to assert themselves more in society.
In social life, as spokespeople for women’s issues.
Example: professional writer Christine de Pizan
In Church life, as abbesses and sometimes Saints.
Example: Saint Teresa of Avila
In political life, ruling alongside their husbands.
Example: Queen Isabella (with her husband Ferdinand of Spain)
Because of this, more restrictions began to be placed on women’s work and trade guilds became increasingly male-only. Also, women’s property rights began to be limited.