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Knightly skills

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Sir Edward:
What skills do you think are important for a knight to have?

According to Disciplina Clericalis by Petri Alfonsi, these are skills (or disciplines) that a knight should have:

Probitates haec sunt, equitare, natare, sagittare, cestibus certare, aucupari, scaccis ludere, versificare.

Translated as:

These things are advisable, riding, swimming, archery, fencing, hunting or falconry, chess playing,  poetry or music.

Sir William:
Let us not forget dancing...knights were required to be skilled in all of the courtly arts.  I did not know archery was among them...considering it was looked upon as a commoner's weapon, I wonder at that.

I think they are all important, in their fashion...by learning each one, you expand not only your knowledge base but your conscience as well, as now you have something else in which to identify with; the courtly skills offset the martial ones.  Orwell once said 'We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.' - those rough men, without any training in the finer arts, would always BE rough...and ready.  Good for when they're soldiers, bad for civilian life.

Riding, swimming, fencing, falconry, hunting, wrestling - these are the physical pursuits that hone your skills for combat, make you into the warrior you've chosen to be.  Chess, poetry, music, dance, courtly love- these are the pursuits of the mind (and heart) to remind you of why you do what you do- you protect these institutions because they remind you that you are human, a thinking man as well as a fighting man...a person worth being around, knowing, etc.  A man who has only the martial element will always be needed, but often misunderstood- and once his service is complete, forgotten.

That last sentence resonates with me...it is what I see occurring all the time with regard to our armed forces.  The media uses words to buffer the horrors these men and women face, they refer to them as 'troops' rather than soldiers or people to lessen the impact- they are different because they've set themselves before our enemies to protect us, but instead of exalting them, they do the opposite.

I'll end with- I think all of them are useful skills- a knight should be well versed in most, if not all, if he wishes to be successful not only on the battlefield but at court as well, where those other skills would've been put to good use.

Thorsteinn:
I can do all but the falconry, and my riding is admittedly very lacking, both the horsy and 2 wheeled kind.

Sir James A:
Riding would of course be first in priority in that list, since most knightly combat would be mounted.

Fencing a close second, as any general experience with weapons would be helpful.

I think hunting, archery, and falconry would all be similar - and most likely more for survival than combat.

Chess playing is very much a game of strategy - devising a plan of attack, evaluating your opponent's current defense, attempting to break their changing defenses while maintaining your own - which would be the situation a knight commander would have on the field, in commanding his subset of troops.

I think swimming would be a general conditioning activity, much like wrestling, throwing stones, etc, as opportunities to swim in armor were probably slim.

Poetry and music would be towards the bottom of the list, as their applicable to combat arts is probably quite limited, though they do keep one a bit more well-rounded and exposed to the more spiritual side of things, as opposed to the physical side in most of the other activities.

However, I would say that the list above is priority in and near times of war. In times of peace, I would reverse the list, as recreation and expansion would probably be more prevalent than combat arts (such as during the renaissance).

Sir Edward:


I thought I'd rekindle the discussion of Chess.

Sir Cliff posted on facebook the image of a circular 3-man chess board. I've managed to locate the site with the rules for it:

http://www.3manchess.com/index.html

But apparently other forms of 3-player chess have been around for centuries, with the more common variants described here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-player_chess

All sorts of other variations have been experimented with. Maybe one of these days we need to have a game-day and get together and play some nice strategy board games. :)

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