press review
Return of the Knights
The knights have once again captured our imagination. Some ascribe their comeback into the public sphere to the interest of Hollywood producers in characters like Gladiator or - recently - King Arthur. Others argue that the interest in knights is artificially spurred by owners of medieval establishments. In Poland, ideals of knighthood have always been popular, at least on the declarative level; the "noble spirit" is, we like to believe, one of our characteristics. The Poles still try to be courteous and claim to have been born with it (it being usually manifested by kissing ladies' hands). Fortunately knighthood is not a local invention, but one devised, practised and chronicled a long time ago. Details can be found in the new issue of Mówią Wieki magazine subtitled Rycerskie Średniowiecze - The Middle Ages and Knighthood.
he magazine presents a lot of interesting material, such as the biography of the knight Zawisza Czarny or notes on the weight of swords. A great deal of space is devoted to the birth of knighthood. A good place to start exploring these articles is the text by Anna Gronowska, entitled Songs of Great Deeds. It is a truly noble thing to sing a song of chivalrous men, is it not? Especially when the occassion is fitting.
For many, the first encounter with the Song of Roland was a lesson at school, usually rather tedious. One learns to admire the chanson's mastery with time; it is undoubtedly the most renowned of the songs of deeds. The article mentions also the Spanish Song of Cid and the German Song of Hildebrand. But "the French epic poems are the most numerous and are a priceless source for historians, who somehow seem to refrain from examining them". Perhaps the historians have had already enough, or have followed the trend according to which nothing after the Song of Roland was equally valuable.