William Marshal: The Flower of Chivalry [Paperback]

Georges Duby (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 12, 1987

Recreates in detail the life of this advisor to the Plantagnets and knight extraordinaire.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"I am not writing the history of events," states Duby, a distinguished French scholar (The Age of the Cathedrals, etc.). "I want to try to see the world the way these men saw it." He succeeds brilliantly, in this chronicle of a humble knight who rose through military prowess and royal favor to become Earl of Pembroke in the turbulent epoch of the late 12th and early 13th centuries. Duby gets inside his subject's skin, helping us to comprehend the complex chivalric value system. He vividly recreates a world in which loyalty, valor and generosity were the principal virtues, in which the individual defined himself (women were barely considered human beings) in terms of his connections and obligationsto his lord, to his family, to his vassals. Duby is a superb writerelegant, concise and insightful and Howard's translation does him justice. This brief account sheds great light on the shadowy medieval universe. Reader's Subscription selection. January 1
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

William ``the Marshal'' (c. 1145-1219), knight, tournament champion, royal household official, warrior, Earl of Pembroke, regent of England, was in his day a paragon of chivalry. In the 1220s William's son commissioned a Histoire of that life and career. This text, discovered and published in the late 1800s by Paul Meyer, was the basis of Sidney Painter's 1933 biography. Now renowned French medievalist Duby explores it not for events, but for its witness to chivalric culture in the minds of the participants themselves. The understanding of William's life given by the author of the Histoire thus serves Duby as an exemplum for interpretive glosses on loyalty, family, generosity, love, leadership, and conflict among late 12th-century aristocrats. Duby's historiographic and rhetorical brilliance will enlighten knowledgeable readers but may disorient others. For college and other history collections. Richard C. Hoffmann, History Dept., York Univ., Downsview, Ontario
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon (February 12, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 039475154X
• ISBN-13: 978-0394751542
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.4 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #76,467 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #76 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Ethnic & National > Irish

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A riveting picture of the real world of a mediaeval knight, July 11, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (London) - See all my reviews

This review is from: William Marshal: The Flower of Chivalry (Paperback)

You feel in reading George Duby's book that a corner is lifted on the real world of life under Henry 11 and his sons.It is a long way from the romanticised version we are fed as children but no less fascinating.The story of the last days of William Marshall must be one of the most moving descriptions ever written of a powerful man preparing to take his leave of this life. Spellbinding. The description of a tournament must be the most comprehensive ever written I was brought up on Ivanhoe and all that! The most devastating discovery is the very minor role played by most women in the lives of the Plantagenets - it will horrify the modern woman.This book evokes all the drama we have seen in classic films like "The Lion in Winter" and puts it in perspective. Not for everyone but for those interested in the twelfth century a real spellbinder. Does anyone know where I can get a copy of William Marshall's biography in English?

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All in a knight's work, May 17, 2006

By 

Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: William Marshall: The Flower of Chivalry (Hardcover)

As you may recall in the film A LION IN WINTER, there was a briefly seen character named "William" (played by Nigel Stock in the superlative 1968 version starring Peter O'Toole and Katherine Hepburn), the right-hand man of King Henry II, who fetched his master's sons, Richard and Geoffrey, and Henry's Queen Eleanor (imprisoned in England's Salisbury Tower) to the royal castle of Chinon in France for the 1183 Christmas court. This William was William Marshal, the subject of this small book (153 pages) of the same name by French medieval historian Georges Duby. The translated volume was published in 1985.

Marshal was a remarkable man, whose knightly career spanned roughly five decades, over which time he went from penniless knight to acting-King of England (when he served as Regent for the young Henry III). Over that period, he was a faithful servant to four kings (Henry II, Richard I, John, Henry III) and one almost-king, the Young King Henry, the eldest son of Henry II crowned and anointed heir in 1170, but who pre-deceased Ol' Dad in June of 1183. William, by then Earl of Pembroke, died in 1219.

Duby's interest lies in that facet of medieval feudalism called chivalry, and he admiringly uses Marshal's life to illustrate the subject. Indeed, the author's description of William's life seems sometimes oddly detached, as if describing a rat in a lab experiment. Georges uses as his primary source a biography of the man - twenty-seven parchment leaves containing 19,914 verses - commissioned by the family shortly after the earl's death, and which survived in its entirety to the present. The biography, "Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal", was written in French, a fact, I suspect, which was crucial in drawing Duby's attention to it.

The author takes great pains to point out that feudal society was a hierarchical one comprised of superimposed layers, and with an order, ostensibly intended by God, "based on the intermingled notions of inequality, service, and loyalty." For laymen, i.e. the non-Church nobility - from bottom to top, from knight to king - it was a complex web of relations of domesticity, consanguinity, vassalage, and politics. Duby's great accomplishment in WILLIAM MARSHAL: THE FLOWER OF CHIVALRY is reducing this complexity to a human level for the reader using Marshal as the poster boy.

With a knowledge of feudalism probably no greater than anyone with an average interest and instruction in Western history, I came away from this absolute gem of a book with a greater and satisfying understanding of five particular aspects of feudalism and chivalry: the loyalty expected of a vassal knight to his lord of the moment regardless of the latter's loyalty to his superior further up the ladder, the importance of tournaments to the knights' livelihoods, the role of increasing circulating specie in eroding the knights' class pretensions, the necessity of marriage to an heiress to move a bachelor knight up in societal rank (marriage = land = power), and the status of women, i.e. landed noble women, in this society run exclusively by men. Indeed, Marshal himself remained a bachelor - and, therefore, a relative non-entity - until he was almost fifty, at which time he married Isabel de Clare, a seventeen-year old orphaned heiress sequestered as a royal ward in the Tower of London for her own protection (like a gold bar in a bank vault), and who was granted to William by a dying Henry II. (At the time, Isabel, in terms of land, was the second richest woman in England.) After Henry died and his successor Richard confirmed the gift, Marshal hurried back to England from France in unseemly haste to wed, deflower, and claim his prize. Isabel, of course, had absolutely no say in the matter, a fact likely to infuriate modern-day feminists. In any case, Marshal lived long enough to father at least ten children by her, and it was via her patrimony that William became Earl of Pembroke.

One last note about THE LION IN WINTER. William's role in the film was perhaps a screenwriter's embellishment. At the time (Nov 1183-Jan 1184), Marshal was likely still trying to attach to a new lord's household after the death of his previous employer, the Young King Henry, the previous summer. The fact that Henry, Jr. had been in rebellion against his father at the time of the former's death wasn't likely to help Marshal attach to the latter's retinue, a feat ensured success only after William spent two years on crusade in the Holy Land from 1185 to 1187.

I would unreservedly recommend WILLIAM MARSHAL to any casual or serious student of European feudalism during the reigns of the early Plantagenets.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exellent tale of the greatest knight on earth., September 16, 1998

By 

"extremezone" - See all my reviews

This review is from: William Marshal: The Flower of Chivalry (Paperback)

This book is great for those beginning the study of medieval life and warfare of the middle ages.William Marshal is the greatest knight that England has ever produced, and a reader will become captive in the story as William becomes one of the nations greatest and respected nobles.