After the destruction of the Palace of Knossos ca. 1375 BC, Crete enters the sphere of Mycenae. The Palatial period that lasted two centuries of prosperity begins. New ruling families emerge and take power embodied by their palaces and fortified citadels with impressive Cyclopean walls. Palaces had a main architectural unit – the megaron – plus propyla, courtyards, workshops, storage rooms; they had painted floors and frescoed walls depicting in the a secco technique with a typical homogeneity palatial life scenes, such as processions, hunting, battles, banquets. All Mycenaean palaces, notably different from the Minoan ones, present common points; a Minoan influence is perceived in Pylos. The palaces were complex functional structures, hierarchically organized administrative, economic, military, political and religious centres, all activities dominated by the wanax. Most important, Mycenae possessed a leading position in power and artistic creativity illustrated by the celebrated Lion Gate. Along with remarkable metalwork tradition, LH III introduces exquisite ivory carving. Clay figurines represent a particular expression of plastic arts.

During the palatial period there was a significant increase in the living standards of the Mycenaeans. The strengthening of certain rulers led to the kingship and, along with other various factors, to the creation of palaces, which were the economic and administrative centres characterized by feudal elements but mainly by a bureaucratic organization. Cyclopean walls assured protection and power. Greece was divided into hegemonies, each palace controlling apparently a large area. There was no subordination of the different regions to one powerful king. The ‘Catalogue of ships’ in the Iliad somehow reflects the topography of Mycenaean Greece. Commercial activities and seafaring developed significantly, taking advantage of neighbouring peaceful conditions. A network of contacts and interactions was created between areas previously closed to each other, like the Hittite kingdom. Cyprus, Egypt, the Near East and by the end of the period also with Italy, from where new weapons and burial customs arrived.

Shortly after the middle of the 13th century catastrophes occurred in Mycenaean centres; but the palaces were repaired, the fortifications reinforced, underground fountains built to ensure water supply. Yet by the end of the century – the beginning of the 12th – the whole Mediterranean was engulfed in a turmoil of raids, like those of the Sea Peoples, natural disasters, population movements and social unrest. The rich Near-Eastern cities and their network collapsed, the Hittite state dissolved, Cyprus and Troy were destroyed and Egypt entered a period of decline. In Greece the palaces were destroyed, the Mycenaean organization disappeared along with the writing, people fled to secure places. Internal factors and the dysfunction of the palace system are mainly the causes of the disasters. A short renaissance followed with small flourishing communities but new destructions brought complete disruption and final decay. The 1st millennium BC would herald the Iron Age based on new political circumstances and the use of the metal-iron-that changed peoples’ life. In many ways though the Mycenaean legacy was preserved.

The LH II period has no monumental architecture to exhibit, although a tendency to monumentality appears with the choice to build impressive tombs, and mansions like the Menelaion could claim to be ‘precursors’ of palaces. Chamber tombs - the most widespread - and tholoi, a typically Mycenaean structure, are the new types of burial. Nine tholoi in Mycenae present a noteworthy technical and decorative evolution, the perfect example being the ‘Treasury of Atreus’. The partly unlooted tholos tomb at Vapheio, Laconia, produced extraordinary finds, including the famous gold cups depicting capture of bulls. Synchronous with Vapheio is the celebrated stone-built cist grave of the ‘Griffin Warrior’ found in Pylos with similar unique finds. The art of the period detected through grave goods displays richness, variety of materials and impeccable execution showing a strong Minoan influence. Minoan and Mycenaean elements intertwine creating an eclectic and mixed style illustrated masterly in the signet rings.

The best-explored sphere of gentry religion is charitable donations. The pattern of donations closely mirrored the position of a family within the hierarchy of gentility, for the greater gentry, having more widespread lands, generally distributed their generosity over a wider geographical area. Very minor gentry would have to accept lesser, and less permanent, means of commemoration, like a finite number of masses, obits, or the donation of an altar light, vestment or furnishing. An exploration of the language used in the fifteenth-century gentry correspondences would offer valuable evidence of the true meaning of religion to the mass of the gentry, not just on their deathbeds but in the course of their daily lives. All gentry men and women were well enough educated in the faith to express their own personal preferences in religion and develop their own favourite saints and rituals.

This chapter aims to survey and assess the studies on what might be called literary or reading networks. It focuses on a highly literate group of book owners and writers connected with the household of Sir John Fastolf at Caister Castle, Norfolk. The richness of the information on the Fastolf household and East Anglian culture is well known and may lead to doubts that such an approach to literary and regional networks can be adopted for other lesser known groups and areas. When Raymond Williams stated that 'culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language', he probably did not have 'gentry' and 'networks' in his mind as the other two. The chapter highlights the problematic nature of those three words, separately and in combination.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book begins by exploring the origins of, and influences on, the culture of the late medieval gentry, thus contributing to the debate on defining the membership of this group. It considers the gentry's emergence as a group distinct from the nobility and looks at the various available routes to gentility. Through surveys of the gentry's military background, administrative and political roles, social behaviour, and education, the book provides an overview of how the group's culture evolved, and how it was disseminated. It offers a broad view of late medieval gentry culture, which explores, reassesses and indeed sometimes even challenges the idea that members of the gentry cultivated their own distinctive cultural identity.

The visual arts played a part in providing the gentry with an identity. In England, unlike in some Continental countries, there existed strong suspicions of the value of visual creativity, which arguably inhibited the development of a system of artistic patronage based on mutual respect between artist and patron. Since Dominicans frequently acted as spiritual advisers to prominent gentry the philosophy played a part in interpreting their visual experiences as well. The concern gentry showed with positioning their tombs is as informative in assessing their visual alertness as their instructions for design and materials. As the more prosperous merchants were permitted to adopt the trappings of the gentry, it may be argued that a change took place in attitudes to visual culture. From the survey of late medieval visual culture it should be clear that issues of identity and appearance were fundamental for the English gentry.

In a period of French cultural dominance, it was in French handbooks of knighthood and in romances in French that the ideals of medieval European chivalry found their most powerful expression. As the companions and partners with the chivalrous knighthood in the chivalrous business of war, the culture and values of chivalry rubbed off naturally on the newcomers to recognised gentility, and was absorbed by them as theirs as well as the knights'. The military experience of the fourteenth century had cemented a mental equation of chivalry and gentillesse, which now included the esquires, and had anchored it firmly in the mind-set both of the gentry themselves and of their superior patrons. Acculturation must be the keynote in any assessment of the place of chivalry in the culture of the gentry in the late Middle Ages.