Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic BookArgues that the origins of courtliness lie in the German courts, their courtier class, and the education for court service in the tenth and eleventh centuries.

An engaging narrative history of the origins of formal education in the West. Winner of the Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History, awarded by the American Philosophical Society.

An exploration of the deep and decisive engagement of clerical scholars and courtiers in the realms of medieval secular intellectual and social life. Medieval humanism, cathedral school education, courtly love and courtesy, and the 12th-century renaissance are among the topics covered.