Who were the greatest knights who ever lived? For medieval writers of the fourteenth century, the answer included King Arthur and Charlemagne, but also Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, the biblical King David and several other heroes from the distant past. Together they became known as the Nine Worthies, models of chivalry whose fame spread across medieval Europe.
By James Turner
Who were the greatest knights who ever lived? For medieval writers of the fourteenth century, the answer included King Arthur and Charlemagne, but also Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, the biblical King David and several other heroes from the distant past. Together they became known as the Nine Worthies, models of chivalry whose fame spread across medieval Europe.
King Arthur and Emperor Charlemagne make an interesting study in enmeshed contrasts and similarities. Charlemagne was the central figure of the Matter of France, just as Arthur was in the Matter of Britain. Both came to serve very similar roles as the facilitator and arbiter of chivalric feats within works of romance literature. Beyond this role, both were understood to be just and capable rulers who participated in highly successful foreign wars that established their polity as the dominant hegemonic power.
By the mid-twelfth century and the first flourishing of romance literature, Charlemagne was already honoured and acknowledged as the founder of both the Kingdom of France and the German-speaking Holy Roman Empire. He was a genuine historical figure; at the heart of his legend lay the deeds of a once living man of flesh and bone. In contrast, Arthur was a totemic figure of strength and magically sourced martial might within Welsh poetry that was co-opted and reshaped by Geoffrey of Monmouth to fit into a wider classically influenced pseudo-historical tradition. The conventions of romance literature and the tastes of its aristocratic audiences placed both king and emperor in a strange twilight world in which fact and fiction blended seamlessly together.
Given their complementary characterisations and status as the narrative keystones of their own subgenres, it is easy to see why audiences in the fourteenth century would be interested in comparing and contrasting the two characters. In fact, their association and the meditation upon chivalric virtues was rapidly integrated into a larger system that caught the imagination of fourteenth-century aristocratic audiences. For Arthur and Charlemagne were natural fits among the exalted ranks of the Nine Worthies.
The Nine Worthies were a collection of the foremost paragons of chivalry, a mustering of the nine greatest knights to have ever lived. The concept was created by the French poet Jacques de Longuyon. In the early 1310s Jacques was commissioned to create a work of epic romance literature by Bishop Theobold de Bar of Liège. The result was the Voeux du Paon or Vows of the Peacock, a romance full of stirring scenes of battle and elaborate chivalric ritual set within the court of Alexander the Great. It seems that the poem was originally intended as a contribution to the Romances of Alexander, a popular subgenre of the wider Matter of Rome that followed stories about the famed Macedonian warrior king. After a series of vignettes describing Alexander’s battles and the intricacies of courtly life, later sections of the poem are concerned with a series of elaborate vows that the poem’s characters swear.
Within the poem, Alexander, who died in the fourth century BC, and his warriors are portrayed as knights and devotees of the code of chivalry. Likewise, descriptions of his court are modelled after that of an early fourteenth-century royal court in terms of etiquette, custom and material culture. The projection of contemporary culture, design and technology onto the distant past was a feature of romance literature. Indeed, it was a variation on the same process that had seen Arthur reimagined from Welsh warrior and giant slayer into a twelfth-century knight.
It is easy to see how a fourteenth century author could map the principles and trappings of knighthood onto Alexander. He was, after all, a hugely successful soldier and conqueror who had been noted by both contemporary Greek and later Roman historians as being incredibly physically brave and having a penchant for personally leading his army’s premier heavy cavalry unit from the front. These classical histories, particularly the works of Plutarch and Arrian, which were broadly available to an educated fourteenth-century audience, also contained accounts of Alexander’s generous treatment of captive women and his respect for defeated enemies. Such qualities aligned closely with the institution and practices of knighthood and made Alexander, or at least a slightly revised and edited version of Alexander, a natural subject of romance literature.
Not every historical or literary figure that was recast this way was a natural fit. However, it is important to appreciate that this was a deliberate and stylistic choice. The inhabitants of fourteenth- and even twelfth-century Europe were perfectly aware of the march of time and the notion that the world inhabited by previous generations looked very different from their own. For one thing, they would have been intimately aware of how clothing and fashion had changed within their own lifetimes.
Furthermore, Jacques de Longuyon’s aristocratic audience would have been aware of the radical advances in metallurgy and metalworking unfolding in their lifetime. After all, it was they who purchased and benefited from the new and increasingly expensive items of armour that resulted from such advancements. Really, they could hardly have missed the fact that they went to war equipped in a manner very different from that of their fathers and grandfathers. This awareness was surely enough to banish any concept of historical stasis. It seems clear then that romance literature based its depictions of the past upon contemporary norms by choice.
This was done to make such stories as accessible and engaging to contemporary audiences as possible. Arthur and Alexander were primarily valuable as recognisable names suitable for contemporary audiences to project their values and interests upon. Of course, the heroes of romance literature were not inert figures. They did not remain self-contained or compartmentalised once their deeds and characters were exaggerated to heroic proportions. New stories of such men remained in dialogue with their audiences, reinforcing and occasionally heightening the very social mores and values that had shaped them. The aspirational nature of the Nine Worthies was both central to their appeal and spoke closely to romance literature’s ability to exert an influence over contemporary politics.
The codification of the Nine Worthies was by far the most influential and impactful element of the Voeux du Paon. The lack of fanfare with which the concept was introduced is therefore slightly strange, as is the relative lack of discourse or connective tissue to the rest of the poem. The Nine Worthies are subdivided into three subgroups, each composed of three worthies. The first of these triads was comprised of pagan heroes from Europe’s Greek- and Roman-sourced classical tradition.
These were Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Hector of Troy. Presumably Achilles did not make the cut because sulking in a tent and defiling the bodies of your defeated enemies was considered unknightly behaviour. This grouping freely blends the historical figures of Alexander and Julius Caesar with the literary character of Hector who was one of the main characters of the Homeric epic poem, the Iliad. As previously noted, the classical canon or Matter of Rome was a popular subgenre of romance literature, and it is clear that their inclusion and visibility within romantic epics had a role in their selection as the embodiments of chivalry.
There was actually a great deal of interplay between the respective Matters, for instance, the Matter of Britain depicts Britain’s settlement by refugees fleeing the fall of Troy. Likewise, Perceforest, an epic poem written in French around 1340 by an unknown author, functioned as something of a midquel providing further connections between the Matter of Rome and Britain, not to mention its own share of fantastical knightly adventures. In this poem, the titular character is a Macedonian general in service to Alexander the Great, who discovers Britain quite by accident when his fleet was blown off course. Discovering a strange land full of giants and sorcerers, Perceforest wages war against a family of sorcerer kings, liberating their Trojan-descended subjects. Perceforest and his brother then go on to create the kingdoms of England and Scotland respectively. Despite being a pagan living before the birth of Christ, the poem’s main character follows a series of visions sent by God that direct him to establish a knightly order that prefigures the Round Table.
The next of these triads is rather more self-contained and composed of famed Jewish kings and military leaders mentioned within the Old Testament. These are Joshua, David and Judah Maccabee. Joshua was a companion and ally of Moses during the Exodus and accompanied him on his revelatory journey to Mount Sinai. Following Moses’ death, Joshua became the leader of the Jewish people and led them in the successful conquest of Canaan. David, of course, is famous for killing the giant Philistine warrior, Goliath, while only a teenager. He later became King of Israel and captured Jerusalem where he housed the sacred Ark of the Covenant.
The final Jewish Worthy comes from rather later in Biblical history. Sometime around 160 BC, Judah Maccabee led a rebellion against the occupying forces of the Seleucid Empire who had purportedly compounded their imperialist outrages by beginning to persecute their Jewish subjects on religious grounds. This rebellion achieved a great deal of success, including the capture or liberation of Jerusalem. While Judah was eventually killed fighting the Seleucids, the rebellion he ignited was ultimately successful. It was also under his leadership that Rome, a fellow enemy of the Seleucids, first became interested in the region.
Like their classical counterparts, these Old Testament Jewish leaders were recast in the model of a perfected fourteenth-century knighthood. While making few, if any, appearances in romance literature, contemporary audiences would have been aware of the deeds and reputations of these Worthies recorded within the Bible. All were noted as great warriors and soldiers with a high degree of military success, which alone was probably enough to justify their inclusion amongst the Worthies and their identification with knighthood. After all, for members of the fourteenth century aristocracy, chivalry did not contrast with knighthood’s crucial martial component, it framed and even complemented it.
On the other hand, the Old Testament Worthies were recorded as occasionally engaging in activities that could potentially clash with their depictions as the worthiest of knights. For instance, David rather famously commits adultery and was forbidden from building a new temple to God in Jerusalem because of the brutal and bloody nature of his later reign.
The Three Christian Worthies
The final trio that made up the Nine Worthies was composed of Christians. These groupings reflected a particular understanding of history and a worldview filtered through the lens of religion. Each of the three groupings of Worthies represented an era of history or stage in religious and philosophical development, the ancient pagans, the pre-Christian biblical tradition and then the Christians, whom the author would have considered representative of both the prevailing paradigm and the natural final stage of this development.
As alluded to earlier, the first two of these Christian Worthies were Arthur and Charlemagne. They were two Christian rulers famed for their conquests and status as warriors. This criterion was broadly met by the third member of their trinity. He was Godfrey of Bouillon, one of the leaders of the First Crusade and the first ruler and founder of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Born sometime around 1060, Godfrey was the second son of Count Eustace II of Boulogne and his wife, Goda of England, who was the daughter of King Æthelred the Unready and the sister of King Edward the Confessor. His father, Eustace, was an ally of Duke William of Normandy and fought in support of the duke’s claims to England at the Battle of Hastings.
Like Charlemagne, Godfrey was credited with great victories over the pagans. Again, similar to both Charlemagne and Arthur, he appeared in several epic poems, the foundational works of the later Crusade Cycle. These poems, the Chanson d’Antioche and the Chanson de Jérusalem, were composed by Graindor de Douai in the early 1180s, almost a century after the events they describe. Despite this chronological dislocation, Graindor based his work closely upon more contemporary chronicles and assiduously avoided the inclusion of fantastical or overly romanticised elements.
While Godfrey makes frequent appearances within both works, he is not always presented as unambiguously heroic, as he would be in later romances written following the popularisation of the Nine Worthies. Godfrey is accurately portrayed, not as the sole leader of the Crusade but as one of a cadre of senior commanders. This commitment to accuracy is further displayed in the latter poem’s discussion of how Godfrey took power in Jerusalem, a process which involved no small amount of politicking and historically occurred only after other prominent crusader leaders turned down the opportunity.
By the time Jacques de Longuyon introduced the concept of the Nine Worthies, the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which Godfrey of Bouillon had ruled and helped found, had been destroyed. Yet the Crusades were far from over; Cyprus remained a Christian kingdom, while in northeastern Europe the Teutonic Order and its allies continued to fight the Livonian Crusade. More importantly, the legacy of the First Crusade remained an important pillar of the shared identity of Christian Europe and the institution of knighthood.
Despite the high rank Godfrey attained and the obvious regard he was treated with by later generations, his achievements were probably the most readily imitable of the Nine Worthies. Indeed, his inclusion within the Nine Worthies was probably representative of the respect their fourteenth-century descendants felt for the participants in the First Crusade in general. It was Godfrey’s presence amongst the Nine Worthies, as much as their perceived engagement with a shared knightly ethos, that made the Nine Worthies an aspirational and influential concept to fourteenth-century aristocratic audiences. These were paragons of knightly virtue, but there was some impression that at least some portions of their behaviour and deeds could be emulated and possibly matched.
The Legacy of the Nine Worthies
Perhaps the strangest aspect of the Nine Worthies was how little discussion or debate its choice of membership generated. The concept proved immediately popular and the Nine Worthies soon became a common and often referenced subject in fourteenth century art and literature. Indeed, Jacques de Longuyon’s lineup of Worthies seems to have been almost universally replicated with no serious attempts ever being made to advance the case for alternative Worthies. Perhaps to someone immersed in the worldview of a fourteenth-century aristocracy, this selection was all so self-evidently correct and superior to any alternatives as not to warrant discussion. Regardless, the Nine Worthies were an important development in the ongoing literary exhortation of chivalric culture that provided practitioners with a series of viable role models.
James Turner has recently completed his doctoral studies at Durham University before which he attended the University of Glasgow. Deeply afraid of numbers and distrustful of counting, his main research interests surround medieval aristocratic culture and identity. You can follow James on X/Twitter @HistorySchmstry
Who were the greatest knights who ever lived? For medieval writers of the fourteenth century, the answer included King Arthur and Charlemagne, but also Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, the biblical King David and several other heroes from the distant past. Together they became known as the Nine Worthies, models of chivalry whose fame spread across medieval Europe.
By James Turner
Who were the greatest knights who ever lived? For medieval writers of the fourteenth century, the answer included King Arthur and Charlemagne, but also Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, the biblical King David and several other heroes from the distant past. Together they became known as the Nine Worthies, models of chivalry whose fame spread across medieval Europe.
King Arthur and Emperor Charlemagne make an interesting study in enmeshed contrasts and similarities. Charlemagne was the central figure of the Matter of France, just as Arthur was in the Matter of Britain. Both came to serve very similar roles as the facilitator and arbiter of chivalric feats within works of romance literature. Beyond this role, both were understood to be just and capable rulers who participated in highly successful foreign wars that established their polity as the dominant hegemonic power.
By the mid-twelfth century and the first flourishing of romance literature, Charlemagne was already honoured and acknowledged as the founder of both the Kingdom of France and the German-speaking Holy Roman Empire. He was a genuine historical figure; at the heart of his legend lay the deeds of a once living man of flesh and bone. In contrast, Arthur was a totemic figure of strength and magically sourced martial might within Welsh poetry that was co-opted and reshaped by Geoffrey of Monmouth to fit into a wider classically influenced pseudo-historical tradition. The conventions of romance literature and the tastes of its aristocratic audiences placed both king and emperor in a strange twilight world in which fact and fiction blended seamlessly together.
Given their complementary characterisations and status as the narrative keystones of their own subgenres, it is easy to see why audiences in the fourteenth century would be interested in comparing and contrasting the two characters. In fact, their association and the meditation upon chivalric virtues was rapidly integrated into a larger system that caught the imagination of fourteenth-century aristocratic audiences. For Arthur and Charlemagne were natural fits among the exalted ranks of the Nine Worthies.
The Birth of the Nine Worthies
The Nine Worthies were a collection of the foremost paragons of chivalry, a mustering of the nine greatest knights to have ever lived. The concept was created by the French poet Jacques de Longuyon. In the early 1310s Jacques was commissioned to create a work of epic romance literature by Bishop Theobold de Bar of Liège. The result was the Voeux du Paon or Vows of the Peacock, a romance full of stirring scenes of battle and elaborate chivalric ritual set within the court of Alexander the Great. It seems that the poem was originally intended as a contribution to the Romances of Alexander, a popular subgenre of the wider Matter of Rome that followed stories about the famed Macedonian warrior king. After a series of vignettes describing Alexander’s battles and the intricacies of courtly life, later sections of the poem are concerned with a series of elaborate vows that the poem’s characters swear.
Within the poem, Alexander, who died in the fourth century BC, and his warriors are portrayed as knights and devotees of the code of chivalry. Likewise, descriptions of his court are modelled after that of an early fourteenth-century royal court in terms of etiquette, custom and material culture. The projection of contemporary culture, design and technology onto the distant past was a feature of romance literature. Indeed, it was a variation on the same process that had seen Arthur reimagined from Welsh warrior and giant slayer into a twelfth-century knight.
It is easy to see how a fourteenth century author could map the principles and trappings of knighthood onto Alexander. He was, after all, a hugely successful soldier and conqueror who had been noted by both contemporary Greek and later Roman historians as being incredibly physically brave and having a penchant for personally leading his army’s premier heavy cavalry unit from the front. These classical histories, particularly the works of Plutarch and Arrian, which were broadly available to an educated fourteenth-century audience, also contained accounts of Alexander’s generous treatment of captive women and his respect for defeated enemies. Such qualities aligned closely with the institution and practices of knighthood and made Alexander, or at least a slightly revised and edited version of Alexander, a natural subject of romance literature.
Not every historical or literary figure that was recast this way was a natural fit. However, it is important to appreciate that this was a deliberate and stylistic choice. The inhabitants of fourteenth- and even twelfth-century Europe were perfectly aware of the march of time and the notion that the world inhabited by previous generations looked very different from their own. For one thing, they would have been intimately aware of how clothing and fashion had changed within their own lifetimes.
Furthermore, Jacques de Longuyon’s aristocratic audience would have been aware of the radical advances in metallurgy and metalworking unfolding in their lifetime. After all, it was they who purchased and benefited from the new and increasingly expensive items of armour that resulted from such advancements. Really, they could hardly have missed the fact that they went to war equipped in a manner very different from that of their fathers and grandfathers. This awareness was surely enough to banish any concept of historical stasis. It seems clear then that romance literature based its depictions of the past upon contemporary norms by choice.
This was done to make such stories as accessible and engaging to contemporary audiences as possible. Arthur and Alexander were primarily valuable as recognisable names suitable for contemporary audiences to project their values and interests upon. Of course, the heroes of romance literature were not inert figures. They did not remain self-contained or compartmentalised once their deeds and characters were exaggerated to heroic proportions. New stories of such men remained in dialogue with their audiences, reinforcing and occasionally heightening the very social mores and values that had shaped them. The aspirational nature of the Nine Worthies was both central to their appeal and spoke closely to romance literature’s ability to exert an influence over contemporary politics.
The Three Pagan Worthies
The codification of the Nine Worthies was by far the most influential and impactful element of the Voeux du Paon. The lack of fanfare with which the concept was introduced is therefore slightly strange, as is the relative lack of discourse or connective tissue to the rest of the poem. The Nine Worthies are subdivided into three subgroups, each composed of three worthies. The first of these triads was comprised of pagan heroes from Europe’s Greek- and Roman-sourced classical tradition.
These were Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Hector of Troy. Presumably Achilles did not make the cut because sulking in a tent and defiling the bodies of your defeated enemies was considered unknightly behaviour. This grouping freely blends the historical figures of Alexander and Julius Caesar with the literary character of Hector who was one of the main characters of the Homeric epic poem, the Iliad. As previously noted, the classical canon or Matter of Rome was a popular subgenre of romance literature, and it is clear that their inclusion and visibility within romantic epics had a role in their selection as the embodiments of chivalry.
There was actually a great deal of interplay between the respective Matters, for instance, the Matter of Britain depicts Britain’s settlement by refugees fleeing the fall of Troy. Likewise, Perceforest, an epic poem written in French around 1340 by an unknown author, functioned as something of a midquel providing further connections between the Matter of Rome and Britain, not to mention its own share of fantastical knightly adventures. In this poem, the titular character is a Macedonian general in service to Alexander the Great, who discovers Britain quite by accident when his fleet was blown off course. Discovering a strange land full of giants and sorcerers, Perceforest wages war against a family of sorcerer kings, liberating their Trojan-descended subjects. Perceforest and his brother then go on to create the kingdoms of England and Scotland respectively. Despite being a pagan living before the birth of Christ, the poem’s main character follows a series of visions sent by God that direct him to establish a knightly order that prefigures the Round Table.
The Three Jewish Worthies
The next of these triads is rather more self-contained and composed of famed Jewish kings and military leaders mentioned within the Old Testament. These are Joshua, David and Judah Maccabee. Joshua was a companion and ally of Moses during the Exodus and accompanied him on his revelatory journey to Mount Sinai. Following Moses’ death, Joshua became the leader of the Jewish people and led them in the successful conquest of Canaan. David, of course, is famous for killing the giant Philistine warrior, Goliath, while only a teenager. He later became King of Israel and captured Jerusalem where he housed the sacred Ark of the Covenant.
The final Jewish Worthy comes from rather later in Biblical history. Sometime around 160 BC, Judah Maccabee led a rebellion against the occupying forces of the Seleucid Empire who had purportedly compounded their imperialist outrages by beginning to persecute their Jewish subjects on religious grounds. This rebellion achieved a great deal of success, including the capture or liberation of Jerusalem. While Judah was eventually killed fighting the Seleucids, the rebellion he ignited was ultimately successful. It was also under his leadership that Rome, a fellow enemy of the Seleucids, first became interested in the region.
Like their classical counterparts, these Old Testament Jewish leaders were recast in the model of a perfected fourteenth-century knighthood. While making few, if any, appearances in romance literature, contemporary audiences would have been aware of the deeds and reputations of these Worthies recorded within the Bible. All were noted as great warriors and soldiers with a high degree of military success, which alone was probably enough to justify their inclusion amongst the Worthies and their identification with knighthood. After all, for members of the fourteenth century aristocracy, chivalry did not contrast with knighthood’s crucial martial component, it framed and even complemented it.
On the other hand, the Old Testament Worthies were recorded as occasionally engaging in activities that could potentially clash with their depictions as the worthiest of knights. For instance, David rather famously commits adultery and was forbidden from building a new temple to God in Jerusalem because of the brutal and bloody nature of his later reign.
The Three Christian Worthies
The final trio that made up the Nine Worthies was composed of Christians. These groupings reflected a particular understanding of history and a worldview filtered through the lens of religion. Each of the three groupings of Worthies represented an era of history or stage in religious and philosophical development, the ancient pagans, the pre-Christian biblical tradition and then the Christians, whom the author would have considered representative of both the prevailing paradigm and the natural final stage of this development.
As alluded to earlier, the first two of these Christian Worthies were Arthur and Charlemagne. They were two Christian rulers famed for their conquests and status as warriors. This criterion was broadly met by the third member of their trinity. He was Godfrey of Bouillon, one of the leaders of the First Crusade and the first ruler and founder of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Born sometime around 1060, Godfrey was the second son of Count Eustace II of Boulogne and his wife, Goda of England, who was the daughter of King Æthelred the Unready and the sister of King Edward the Confessor. His father, Eustace, was an ally of Duke William of Normandy and fought in support of the duke’s claims to England at the Battle of Hastings.
Like Charlemagne, Godfrey was credited with great victories over the pagans. Again, similar to both Charlemagne and Arthur, he appeared in several epic poems, the foundational works of the later Crusade Cycle. These poems, the Chanson d’Antioche and the Chanson de Jérusalem, were composed by Graindor de Douai in the early 1180s, almost a century after the events they describe. Despite this chronological dislocation, Graindor based his work closely upon more contemporary chronicles and assiduously avoided the inclusion of fantastical or overly romanticised elements.
While Godfrey makes frequent appearances within both works, he is not always presented as unambiguously heroic, as he would be in later romances written following the popularisation of the Nine Worthies. Godfrey is accurately portrayed, not as the sole leader of the Crusade but as one of a cadre of senior commanders. This commitment to accuracy is further displayed in the latter poem’s discussion of how Godfrey took power in Jerusalem, a process which involved no small amount of politicking and historically occurred only after other prominent crusader leaders turned down the opportunity.
By the time Jacques de Longuyon introduced the concept of the Nine Worthies, the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which Godfrey of Bouillon had ruled and helped found, had been destroyed. Yet the Crusades were far from over; Cyprus remained a Christian kingdom, while in northeastern Europe the Teutonic Order and its allies continued to fight the Livonian Crusade. More importantly, the legacy of the First Crusade remained an important pillar of the shared identity of Christian Europe and the institution of knighthood.
Despite the high rank Godfrey attained and the obvious regard he was treated with by later generations, his achievements were probably the most readily imitable of the Nine Worthies. Indeed, his inclusion within the Nine Worthies was probably representative of the respect their fourteenth-century descendants felt for the participants in the First Crusade in general. It was Godfrey’s presence amongst the Nine Worthies, as much as their perceived engagement with a shared knightly ethos, that made the Nine Worthies an aspirational and influential concept to fourteenth-century aristocratic audiences. These were paragons of knightly virtue, but there was some impression that at least some portions of their behaviour and deeds could be emulated and possibly matched.
The Legacy of the Nine Worthies
Perhaps the strangest aspect of the Nine Worthies was how little discussion or debate its choice of membership generated. The concept proved immediately popular and the Nine Worthies soon became a common and often referenced subject in fourteenth century art and literature. Indeed, Jacques de Longuyon’s lineup of Worthies seems to have been almost universally replicated with no serious attempts ever being made to advance the case for alternative Worthies. Perhaps to someone immersed in the worldview of a fourteenth-century aristocracy, this selection was all so self-evidently correct and superior to any alternatives as not to warrant discussion. Regardless, the Nine Worthies were an important development in the ongoing literary exhortation of chivalric culture that provided practitioners with a series of viable role models.
James Turner has recently completed his doctoral studies at Durham University before which he attended the University of Glasgow. Deeply afraid of numbers and distrustful of counting, his main research interests surround medieval aristocratic culture and identity. You can follow James on X/Twitter @HistorySchmstry
Click here to read more from James Turner
Top Image: The Nine Worthies, depicted in a series of medieval sculptures in the Hansasaal of Cologne City Hall in Germany. The figures represent nine heroes from pagan, Jewish and Christian traditions who were celebrated as models of chivalry. Photo © Raimond Spekking / CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)
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