This paper calls to remembrance an older world of the 1490s, one not often revisted by students of the Age of Discovery. This excursion offers a new path towards the better understanding of the Europeans of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries through the reexamination of the international chivalric culture of christian Europe. In the case of chivalry, pejorative judgement has distracted us from a striking process of creative adaptation. This papers first goal is to give some idea of the atmosphere of the decade, of the pervasiveness of this chivalric element. Chivalry functioned as a medium for international understanding and communication, a common social, cultural, political, and even religious language. It also provided an arena of competition between individuals and groups.