Much has been said and written about the high medieval nobility as a social class and their ideas of chivalry. David Crouch has recently written a very useful and densely packed overview of the centuries-spanning English and French historiographies of the nobility underlying current discussions and it is therefore unnecessary here to rehearse the main points of debate. One of the most interesting themes to arise from Crouch's discussion is the adoption of the French sociologist-philosopher Pierre Bourdieu's notion of habitus in an attempt to define and analyse ‘pre-chivalric’ chivalric behaviour – ‘pre-chivalric’ meaning before the first manuals and codifications of noble behaviour appeared in the late twelfth century. Although there are several epistemological issues with Bourdieu's use of habitus as well as with Crouch's assertion that habitus ‘disappears’ when codification of behaviour takes place, the notion that (embodied) behaviour is socioculturally produced and takes place subconsciously in social interaction between members of the same group or community is extremely useful for the discussion of aristocratic ideas of personal and communal identity. In Bourdieu's theory as I understand it, habitus is always present (the epistemological issue here is how change is effected) and codification is therefore part of it. Moreover, it is important to make a distinction between ideal and day-to-day behaviour. The former is obviously found in the prescriptive manuals Crouch discusses, initially written by those outside the secular aristocratic community; the latter is more difficult to envisage because of its subjective, embodied, nature.