12 mins confidence:   age of chivalry
Explanation:
http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nawest/content/overv...
"The period is also described as an “age of chivalry.” The code of chivalry stressed gentility, generosity, concern for the powerless, and a capacity for experiencing selfless and passionate romantic love."
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Note added at 1 hr (2013-01-31 17:42:42 GMT)
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Since the order of the Knights of St. John was established in the 16th century "age of chivalry" came to my mind; maybe you could paraphrase it
Reference: http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nawest/content/overv...
| | | Notes to answerer
Asker: Wow, I guess you and ntext had the same idea at the same time! Do you think 'chivalry' would really work, especially as the dates given seem later than what is normally referred to as the 'age of chivalry'?
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7 mins confidence: peer agreement (net): +2 Middle Ages, medieval period, chivalric age
Explanation:
Any of the above would do, and will link to knights in a lot of people's minds.
You could also use "feudal period", but all of the medieval historians will tell you why that is inaccurate, and I would be first in line. :)
Age of Knights is also a possibility.
Depending on the frequency with which Ritterzeit appears, I would use any and all of the above.
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Note added at 1 hr (2013-01-31 17:49:26 GMT)
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Susan Reynolds, *Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted* 1994
The problem with the term "feudalism" is that it describes one type of hierarchical power structure that was not only not universal throughout Europe, it was not even a dominant form for establishing power relations.
The manorial system, in which serfs worked the land for nobles, is not based on fiefs or vassalage, but land owner-servant relationships, and there was no hierarchical linkage of vassals/fiefs extending from the manor through various noble levels to the king.
The term itself comes from a Roman text, the *Libri Feodorum*, which was compiled in 11th C Lombardy about an academic argument revolving around land responsibilities.
The terms (fief and vassal) were pulled out of the text by 16thC French lawyers, who declared the text Roman legal history (it's not), and applied it as an equivalent to their current system of nobility, peasants, and everyone else.
Jump to the 19thC, when scholarship on the medieval period starts, and the English academics adopted the French standards lock, stock, and barrel. The French, in the mean time, had translated the terms into strict legal meanings for land ownership. These strictly defined terms were not translated by the historians, who proceeded to apply these terms to land ownership across centuries and countries.
In the late 20thC, historians started looking at the power relationships and discovered that the "feudal system" is a house of cards that never actually worked and is actually an obstacle to understanding how actual power relationships worked.
Feudalism doesn't explain the difference in England between villein and serf or why one was free and one was not. (Jus Prime Nocte, the lord's right to have sex with his serfs on her wedding night is, btw, an invention of the 19thC designed to prove that the Middle Ages were barbaric and the Renaissance was wonderful.)
Feudalism doesn't explain the Kürfürsten in Germany, or why some cities owed allegiance/tax to local bishops and others to the king/emperor.
Nor does it explain why the systems change radically over time. The actual role of knights in society is incredibly dynamic, both temporally and geographically, ranging form thugs to gentlement, warriors to soldiers to duelists. Feudalism cannot explain the temporal changes in the roles of powerful and the powerless with respect to their societies.
The list goes on, country by country, as to why the local systems do not fit the feudal model.
So, instead of using a model that started out as an academic debate, medieval historians refer to "power relations/relationships" and get a lot further. It's easier to talk about something when you don't have to spend a chapter explaining why your data is exceptional and doesn't fit the model. And the data become more interesting when you don't have to start from a point in which the social group you are studying obviously didn't understand the feudal system and got their power structures wrong, and thus massage your data to fit a system imposed on it from 5-10 centuries distance.
Hope this is helpful.
| Rebecca Garber
Local time: 09:48
Specializes in field
Native speaker of:  English
PRO pts in category: 23
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| | Grading comment | I think I'm going with 'Age of Knights' (and a few other options throughout the text), which was first suggested here. Thank you - also for your detailed explanation of terms! |
| Notes to answerer
Asker: I have to admit I'm not an historian, so I'm not uptodate on the discussions about terminology... would "feudal" be so wrong? In the reference posted by Kim below, I found the following statement: " Catherine of Aragon was the daughter of Emperor Charles V of Aragon, to whom the Maltese islands belonged, until they were given by a feudal agreement to the Knights in 1530." So do you think 'feudal' might be appropriate here after all? I'd love to hear an explanation from you, as a 'real' historian! :-)
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