Where can I find information on historical paladins?

May 27, 2008 7:28 PM

Where can I find information on historical paladins?

I'm trying to do some research on historical paladins and medieval paladins legends. Wikipedia has a decent article as a starting point, but I'm having some trouble finding any other information that isn't about WarCraft or Dungeons & Dragons. I was wondering if anyone here could suggest some good sources to look into.

I've also heard some interesting stories about Middle Eastern paladins from the Byzantine Empire, but I haven't found much about them in writing. Any information on this would be greatly appreciated as well.

posted by magodesky to society & culture (3 answers total)

A good translation of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur would be a good place to start. I like the paperback one with the introduction by Robert Graves. Malory clearly believed that these "paladins" (Sir Lancelot, Sir Galahad, Sir Percival) were quite capable of passing miracles due to their virtue and their special relationship with God; but I believe he considered himself a historian, desirous of setting down the true facts of the lives of these knights; and not a fabulist.

I am still looking for a good modern historical analysis of Arthurian times that doesn't absolutely suck all the magic and romance out of the stories. Maybe someone else has an idea about that.
posted by ikkyu2 at 7:57 PM on May 27, 2008

D&D paladins owe more to the Charlemagne legend than Arthurian, which presents a slightly different, but nonetheless similar, outlook on the ultimate knight.

The D&D paladin, fortunately for your case, has an extremely specific source. It is based, directly and literally, on the character of Holger Carlsen in Poul Anderson's novel Three Hearts and Three Lions. (Seriously, the paladin is just Holger statted up for play.) Holger, in the context of the novel, is directly based on Ogier the Dane, one of the heroes in the Roland saga. So you'll want to direct your reading and research toward the main Roland epics — The Song of Roland and Orlando Furioso. You would do well to read a good book on Charlemagne and his epoch, but the modern fantasy paladin is much more rooted in legend and poetry than in history.

Of course, there was a certain degree of accretion from Arthurian legend, and I'd always recommend Le Morte d'Arthur for someone trying their way through medieval chivalric legends. But the core you're looking for is in Roland. The Anderson book is also a great, relatively short read and will give you a lot of insight on the formation of the modern "standard fantasy" mythos.
posted by graymouser at 4:28 AM on May 28, 2008 [6 favorites]

I've also heard some interesting stories about Middle Eastern paladins from the Byzantine Empire, but I haven't found much about them in writing. Any information on this would be greatly appreciated as well.

I'm not exactly sure what you're referring to here, although my understanding of Byzantine history is somewhat superficial. First of all, of course, the Byzantines were Greeks and called themselves Romans--they weren't Middle Eastern. Second, the Byzantine mounted warrior was typically a horse-archer in chainmail, not the typical sword-and-lance paladin. Third, as far as I know, there wasn't much of an individualistic element in Byzantine military culture--it was very much derived from Roman legionary ideals, which prioritized teamwork over independent feats of courage.

On the other hand, I think the Arabs did have something like a chivalrous warrior ideal. Besides the obvious case of Saladin, I can't think of any examples--but you can find representations of scary Moorish knights all over the chivalry literature.

(if you're doing this for some sort of academic reason, be careful to distinguish chivalry--fundamentally a secular value system--from the ideal of the Christian knight, whether in the Carolingian or in the Crusader version. Both of these are the antecedents of the paladin, but they are not the same.)
posted by nasreddin at 9:13 AM on May 28, 2008