Description

This book has four texts from the Hispanic Middle Ages. They deal with knights and their duties. They ask how armed men should use power and serve others. The texts cover history, ethics and thought on how to rule. They link knights’ ideals to life in a world of war.

One text gives Alfonso X of Castile’s rules for knights. These come from Partida II, Title XXI. Another is Ramon Llull’s Cartea Ordinului Cavaleriei. Don Juan Manuel wrote Cartea Cavalerului și a Scutierului. The fourth is Cartea Ordinului Eșarfei. The four texts span about seventy-five years.

Alfonso X and Don Juan Manuel stress service to the Church. They also stress service to the people around them. Llull sets knights a wider task. They should unite the world through Christian faith. The fourth text makes a late case for knighthood’s noble rank. All four use Church teaching to set out duties and bonds. They draw on Aristotle’s views on ethics and politics. Other sources include Thomas Aquinas, sermons and texts that teach wisdom.

Kings, nobles and knights wrote these works. So did theologians who sought to spread their faith. Court life and struggles for land shaped their world. So did study in houses of monks. They sought rules to guide their own acts. These rules would serve others and help save their own souls.

Mianda Cioba sees these texts as bids to set moral bounds on power. Shared duties and support help explain how groups took shape to rule. This view gives each person worth beyond their use to rulers.

Cioba translates the texts from Spanish. She adds an opening study, timelines and notes. The book forms part of Biblioteca Hispanică a Institutului Cervantes. People have read Llull’s text in translation since the Middle Ages. More recent versions of Alfonso’s rules exist in French and English. Don Juan Manuel’s work appears here in its first translation into another language. The work on the Order of the Sash does too.