In this lecture the Professor discusses Medieval Society & Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Bilkent HIST417 20111223 LECTURE21 Medieval Society & Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
A 'Herald' was the equivalent to the modern announcer who would announce participants in events, jousts, meetings, etc., and he needed a quick and easy way determine who was who. The heraldry system basically derived to help them in this recognition.
Chaucer’s book The Canterbury Tales was something I felt I should read, rather than was looking forward to reading. To my surprise, I rather enjoyed it. It certainly gives a good snapshot of European society in the Middle Ages, especially the predominance of the RC church in their everyday lives, and how people felt about it.
Had I known the instructor would use the phrase “snapshot of Medieval Society”, I would have chosen another one. My fault for not fully watching before commenting.
Great lesson, tho your information about late medieval knights moving like robots and not being able to mount a horse without help is very exaggerated, knight in full plate armour was surprisingly quite mobile, there is lot of videos about mobility in full plate armor.
@@realCevra I don't doubt that getting some help (maybe someone handing the lance, closing some clasps) was much appreciated or even necessary.... but just because they wear 100pounds of armor grown men don't run into problems mounting a horse necessarily!
usually what we regard as full armor was armor designed to sit in the saddle, not to step over the back of a horse to get to sit there, they lack the flexibility in moving parts to successfully undergo that task there are of course a lot of full armor variants where there is no such problem and the problematic ones could be limited to jousting or show armor
It comes from the fact that jousting armour was much heavier than battle armour. It was meant to protect the knight from a particular sort of attack or blow. The helmets, the shields, and upper body armour was very heavily reinforced. That would mean the rider might need some assistance getting mounted. But that was not the case with actual battle armour. I think drawings of jousting tournaments is where that idea of knights needing a crane came from.
I am very sorry, but the reason why not every nobleman was a knight is incorrect in this lecture. Most noblemen were raised to be knights , only a few were raised to join a monastery. Most were never knighted because they did not have either the lineage (3 generations of nobility) or the money for the whole equipment, i.e. the horse, the armour and the right weapons. All that was very expensive, like a house and a luxury car together, translated into modern time costs, and only few had the means. There are so many over-simplifications in this lecture, almost to the point of inaccuracy, so it isn't a very high academic level.
To add to this, his cartoonish description of medieval armor. I think I heard the other day that a full suit weighed just less than modern US Army kit. Around 60+ pounds. And they could absolutely mount horses and move very well.
