Editing Chivalry (section)

===Criticism===
Medieval historian [[Richard W. Kaeuper]] saw chivalry as a central focus in the study of the European Middle Ages that was too often presented as a civilizing and stabilizing influence in the turbulent Middle Ages. On the contrary, Kaueper argues "that in the problem of public order the knights themselves played an ambivalent, problematic role and that the guides to their conduct that chivalry provided were in themselves complex and problematic."<ref name=Kaeuper>{{cite book|first=Richard W.|last=Kaeuper|title=Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe|location=Oxford|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1999}}</ref>{{rp|3}} Many of the codes and ideals of chivalry were contradictory: when knights did live up to them, they did not lead to a more "ordered and peaceful society". The tripartite conception of medieval European society (those who pray, those who fight, and those who work) along with other linked subcategories of monarchy and aristocracy, worked in congruence with knighthood to reform the institution{{ambiguous|date=July 2023}} in an effort "to secure public order in a society just coming into its mature formation."{{r|Kaeuper|page=4}}

Kaeuper says that knighthood and the worldview of "those who fight" was pre-Christian in many ways and outside the purview of the church, at least initially. The church saw it as a duty to reform and guide knights in a way that weathered the disorderly, martial, and chauvinistic elements of chivalry.{{r|Kaeuper|pages=62–83}} Royalty also clashed with knighthood over the conduct of warfare and personal disputes between knights and other knights (and even between knights and aristocracy).{{r|Kaeuper|pages=93–97}} While the worldview of "those who work" (the burgeoning merchant class and bourgeoisie) was still in incubation, Kaeuper states that the social and economic class that would end up defining modernity was fundamentally at odds with knights, and those with chivalrous valor saw the values of commerce as beneath them. Those who engaged in commerce and derived their value system from it could be confronted with violence by knights.{{r|Kaeuper|pages=121–139}}

According to British historian [[David Crouch (historian)|David Crouch]], many early writers on medieval chivalry cannot be trusted as accurate sources, because they sometimes have "polemical purpose which colours their prose".<ref name="Crouch_7">{{harvp|Crouch|2005|p=7}}</ref> As for [[Kenelm Henry Digby]] and Léon Gautier, chivalry was a means to transform their corrupt and secular worlds.<ref name="Crouch_8">{{harvp|Crouch|2005|p=8}}</ref> Gautier also emphasized that chivalry originated from the Teutonic forests and was brought up into civilization by the [[Catholic]] Church.<ref>{{harvp|Crouch|2005|p=12}}</ref> [[Charles Mills (historian)|Charles Mills]] used chivalry "to demonstrate that the Regency gentleman was the ethical heir of a great moral estate, and to provide an inventory of its treasure".<ref name="Crouch_8" /> Mills also stated that chivalry was a social, not a military phenomenon, with its key features: generosity, fidelity, liberality, and courtesy.<ref>{{harvp|Crouch|2005|pp=10–11}}</ref>