Petrov R. S.
Georg von Ehingen: the way of chivalry in the evidence of the Age, in: Proslogion: Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Social History and Culture, 2025. Vol. 8(2). P. 7–14.
Ruslan Sergeevich Petrov, second-year Master’s student, St. Petersburg State University (199034, Russia, St. Petersburg, Mendeleevskaya liniya, 5).
st085169@student.spbu.ru
Language: Russian
The article presents an analysis of the autobiographical text by the Swabian knight Georg von Ehingen (1428–1508), «The Knightly Travels», treating it as a significant ego-document of the 15th century. The text is examined as a case study of the adaptation of personal experience to the cultural templates of knightly autobiography, which include standards of self-presentation, social norms, and narrative conventions. The study aims to reconstruct the concepts of honour, religious devotion, courtly service, and the pursuit of glory. Through an analysis of the key stages of the author’s life path, the article investigates how the autobiography integrates personal experience into the broader cultural context. The focus is on the reconstruction of the key elements of the knightly ethos via an analysis of the author’s rhetorical strategies: the combination of demonstrative valour and emphasised modesty; the scenes of instruction from his father in the ancestral castle of Kilberg, symbolising the transmission of family values; and the descriptions of the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, service on Rhodes, and participation in military campaigns on the Iberian Peninsula as a means of strengthening religious and social identity. The text allows us to trace how personal memory is integrated into collective expectations and genre stereotypes, demonstrating not only the stability but also the adaptability of knightly values, their capacity for transformation against the backdrop of the crises of the late Middle Ages. Thus, «The Knightly Travels» emerges as an important source for studying the transformation of knightly selfawareness, courtly culture, and social practices in the 15th century
Keywords: Georg von Ehingen, lower nobility, Holy Roman Empire, autobiography, honor, pilgrimage, court culture, chivalry, ego-documents
10.24412/2500-0926-2025-82-7-14
