[Sca-cooks] Age of Choivalry was *Sigh* That tomato thing - again

[Terry Decker]

> QUERY 1:  How does one actual distinguish whether one is learning factual 
> or
> ficticious/wishful without actual book-reading, documented research?
>

You might ask someone who was skilled in that sort of thing to do your fact 
checking (a truly Medieval way of handling the situation).  Or you might dig 
into the Florilegium for information on a subject and use that as the 
Cliff's Notes for the debate.

> QUERY 2:  Does the "Age of Chivalry" refer to behaviors or a general
> timeframe in Western European (basically) history?  Just getting our
> difinitions stright aw we go.  I want to be sure I am looking at the same
> thing you are.
>
> niccolo

Both.  The Age of Chivalry is the Age of the Horse from the inception of the 
iron stirrup around 700 through about 1500, when firepower turned knights 
into targets.  The behaviors that help define the Age of Chivalry are based 
on the feudal obligations that made the knight the powerful figure of the 
age.  I tend to think of the end of the Age of Chivalry as being 1513, when 
Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince and Other Discourses, the antithesis of the 
chivalric ideal, was published.

Bear