Editing Chivalry (section)

==Literary chivalry and historical reality==
Supporters of chivalry have assumed since the late medieval period that there was a time in the past when chivalry was a living institution, when men acted chivalrously, the imitation of which period would much improve the present.{{cn|date=August 2024}}

However, with the birth of modern historical and literary research, scholars have found that however far back in time "The Age of Chivalry" is searched for, it is always further in the past, even back to the [[Roman Empire]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.knightsofchivalry.com/origin-of-the-knights.html|title=Origin of the Knights|website=Knights of Chivalry|access-date=2018-02-28|archive-date=28 February 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180228161648/https://www.knightsofchivalry.com/origin-of-the-knights.html|url-status=live}}</ref> From [[Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi]]:

<blockquote>
We must not confound chivalry with the [[feudal system]]. The feudal system may be called the real life of the period of which we are treating, possessing its advantages and inconveniences, its virtues and its vices. Chivalry, on the contrary, is the ideal world, such as it existed in the imaginations of the [[chivalric romance|romance]] writers. Its essential character is devotion to woman and to honour.<ref name=Sismondi>{{cite book
|title=Historical View of the Literatures of the South of Europe
|translator=[[Thomas Roscoe]]
|edition=4th
|place=London
|author-link=Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi
|first=Jean Charles Léonard de
|last=Sismondi
|date=1885–88}}</ref>{{rp|I, 76–77}}</blockquote>

Sismondi alludes to the fictitious [[Arthurian romance]]s about the imaginary [[King Arthur|Court of King Arthur]] when taken as factual presentations of a historical age of chivalry. He continues:

<blockquote>
The more closely we look into history, the more clearly shall we perceive that the system of chivalry is an invention almost entirely poetical. It is impossible to distinguish the countries in which it is said to have prevailed. It is always represented as distant from us both in time and place, and whilst the contemporary historians give us a clear, detailed, and complete account of the vices of the court and the great, of the ferocity or corruption of the nobles, and of the servility of the people, we are astonished to find the poets, after a long lapse of time, adorning the very same ages with the most splendid fictions of grace, virtue, and loyalty. The romance writers of the twelfth century placed the age of chivalry in the time of Charlemagne. The period when these writers existed, is the time pointed out by [[Francis I of France|Francis I]]. At the present day [about 1810], we imagine we can still see chivalry flourishing in the persons of [[Du Guesclin]] and [[Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard|Bayard]], under [[Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor|Charles V]] and Francis I. But when we come to examine either the one period or the other, although we find in each some heroic spirits, we are forced to confess that it is necessary to antedate the age of chivalry, at least three or four centuries before any period of authentic history.<ref name=Sismondi/>{{rp|I, 79}}
</blockquote>