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The Nine Worthies are nine historical, scriptural and legendary personages who personify the ideals of chivalry as were established in the Middle Ages. All are commonly referred to as 'Princes' in their own right, despite whatever true titles each man may have held. In French they are called ''Les Neuf Preux'', meaning "Nine Valiants",〔''Larousse Dictionnaire de la Langue Francaise'' Lexis, 1993: ''Brave, Vaillant''〕 which term gives a slightly more focused idea of the sort of moral virtue they were deemed to represent so perfectly, that of soldierly courage and generalship. The study of the life of each would thus form a good education for the aspirant to chivalric status. In Italy they are ''i Nove Prodi''. The Nine Worthies include three good pagans: Hector, Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar, three good Jews: Joshua, David, and Judas Maccabeus, and three good Christians: King Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon. ==Origin== They were first described in the early fourteenth century, by Jacques de Longuyon in his ''Voeux du Paon'' (1312).〔Johan Huizinga, ''The Waning of the Middle Ages'', (1919) 1924:61.〕 Their selection, as Johan Huizinga pointed out, betrays a close connection with the romance genre of chivalry. Neatly divided into a triad of triads, these men were considered to be paragons of chivalry within their particular tradition: be it Pagan, Jewish, or Christian. Longuyon's choices soon became a common theme in the literature and art of the Middle Ages and earned a permanent place in the popular consciousness. The medieval "craving for symmetry"〔Huizinga 1924:61.〕 engendered female equivalents, the ''neuf preuses'', who were sometimes added, though the women chosen varied. Eustache Deschamps selected "a group of rather bizarre heroines"〔Huizinga 1924:61.〕 selected from fiction and history, among them Penthesilea, Tomyris, Semiramis. Literature and suites of tapestry featured the full complement of eighteen, whose allegorical figures preceded King Henry VI of England in his triumphal royal entry to Paris, 1431.〔Huizinga 1924:61.〕 A "tenth worthy"〔Compare the concept of the "Tenth Muse".〕 was added by Deschamps, in the figure of Bertrand du Guesclin, the Breton knight to whom France owed recovery from the battles of Crécy (1346) and Poitiers (1356). Francis I of France still occasionally paraded himself at court dressed in the "antique mode" to identify himself also as one of the ''Neuf Preux''.〔Huizinga 1924:61.〕 The 1459 Ingeram Codex presents the coat of arms of the Nine Worthies among a larger list of attributed arms of "exemplary" individuals, as the three "better Jews", "best pagans" and "best Christians" alongside the arms attributed to three heroes of king David (glossed as "the first coats of arms), the Three Magi, the "three mildest princes", the "three worst tyrants" (Nebuchadnezzar, Antiochos Epiphanes and Nero), "three patient ones" (Alphonse the Wise, Job and Saint Eustachius), "three anointed kings" (France, Denmark and Hungary) and "three noble dynasties" (Louis the Prudent as Dauphin, Ladislaus I of Hungary, and Otto III, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg of the House of Welf). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Nine Worthies」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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