Courtesy

What was that courtesy code of the knights? Strong guys, strongly armed going here and there wearing armors… they are supposed to be good makers, but why doing the right thing required swords? A bunch of armed guys with volatile tempers are controlled by this alleged code. They were not like the modern police, they did not answer to a superior except for a lord or a king who was too busy doing his own violence against the villain of the moment.

The code looks abstract and vague from this point of history. It is almost a good manner manual, but did it have actual ethic content? Being brave and doing the good thing seems not to be enough specific rules, and the respect of the honor sometimes seems more like an infantile excuse for bullying… except that we are talking about big guys with swords.

May be is because of my Hispanic heritage that when I think about a knight I cannot avoid thinking about “Don Quijote de la Mancha”, trying to force someone to confess that his “Dulcinea” was the most beautiful girl ever… “Don Quijote” was a lousy warrior and most of the times he got beaten, but he could take the “Helmet of Mambrino” –which was actually a barber’s bowl –using violence. His courtesy code was absurd even in the sixteen century.

Was the Chivalry Code more logical during the middle ages and its application restricted toe when it was possible, as the modern Humanitarian Law? Were these knights actually models of virtue or just a bunch of belligerent guys doing almost what they wanted?