The burghers were essentially medieval Europe’s middle class, though they tended to be considered more of a social class than an economic class. The rank of burghers could include small artisans and shopkeepers as well as wealthy merchants. They tended to be associated with cities.

Chivalry was an international code of conduct and cultural ideal shared between the nobility of Europe in the Middle Ages. Among other morals, it promoted courage in battle, courtesy, kindness, and the defense of women and the Church. As Geoffrey Brereton describes it, “the savagery of fourteenth-century Europe was tempered and sometimes controlled by a tradition of order and culture” but still the upholder of chivalry “on occasion massacred its prisoners and tortured its enemies in public” (19).

“The Church” generally refers to the Catholic Church, the only recognized religious institution in medieval Europe. Led by the pope in Rome, the Church served a variety of functions in the Middle Ages, such as providing social welfare to the populace and mediating peace between governments. It also controlled its own lands and territories, most significantly Rome and lands around central Italy. At the time of Froissart’s Chronicles, the pope was located in Avignon, a city in what is now southeastern France but at the time was part of the papacy’s territories.