Did medieval knights really live by a code of chivalry?

Partly, but the famous code was more an ideal than a rulebook. Chivalry was an informal and varying code of conduct that developed in France between 1170 and 1220, tied to the Christian institution of knighthood. Knights were expected above all to fight bravely and to be courteous, yet the historian Sismondi called chivalry the ideal world of the imaginations of the romance writers.

Knights themselves came first. The word chivalry comes from the Old French chevalerie, meaning "horse soldiery", and the first knights appeared under Charlemagne in the 8th century, when any well-equipped horseman could be called a knight. By the 12th century knighthood had become a social rank. A boy of a noble family became a page at about seven, a squire at 14, and was finally knighted after a ritual bath and a night of prayer.

Then came the dream. The code of chivalry is a product of the Late Middle Ages, partly from idealising the historical knights who fought in the Holy Land and partly from ideals of courtly love. And look at what the real world did. Captured knights were customarily held for ransom in somewhat comfortable surroundings, while non-knights were often slaughtered after capture. At Crécy and Poitiers, the French nobles' chivalrous tactic of charging into a hail of arrows failed repeatedly.

So did knights live by chivalry? Some tried, and the rituals of knighthood were real. But the age of chivalry always seems to lie in the past: however far back scholars look for it, it is always further back still.