A former colleague used to insist that there are really only two questions we need to ask: “says who?” and “so what?” Were we to refine these admittedly rough questions into “what are our legitimate sources?” and “how do they help us understand the past?” we might secure more general agreement. But rough or smooth, we are stuck with them and they continue to generate useful debate. These are the questions I want to address in relationship to chivalry, a topic of great interest to all medievalists and certainly to the members of De Re Militari. I expect to generate debate. In the process I will likely have to draw on evidence I have tapped before, but who can doubt in the twenty-first century that recycling is a virtue?

My general position will be known to any who have read books and articles I have written, but just for clarity let me announce a thesis, that sine qua non that is so often merely sine in student essays – and, yes, in the occasional professional paper. I am convinced of the legitimacy of reading chivalric literature as historical evidence; I believe that use of these sources is, in fact, necessary to an understanding of chivalry; and I take chivalry to be the basic organizing code of the lay elite of Europe for perhaps half a millennium. The issues at hand are not trivial.