Kaeuper R.W. - Chivalry and violence in medieval europe (1999)(en)

Such unqualiÞed praise is easily understandable. Men who have acted largely in the world brought great honour and legitimacy to a way of life with which they were closely identiÞed, or which, as in WilliamÕs case, they personiÞed. The need for knighthood was undeniable; churchmen knew that knighthood could be the armed force of God. When that force acted heroically on the battleÞeld (even if not in strict accord with clerical standards) or when it acted beneÞcently in a court, giving gifts to religious foundations, the concept of an ordo of knighthood was available as a vehicle for thought. It was likely to loom much larger in both lay and clerical minds than the formal qualiÞcations and particular strictures attached to the idea.

PART III

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THE LINK WITH ROYAUTƒ

WE have seen that clerical theory accepted violence for right causes and not for wrongÑa distinction that is tricky to make at the best of times, and especially so in an imperfect world. Kings and royal administrators, no less

than their counterparts in the clerical hierarchy, had mixed feelings about basic issues of war, violence, and rightful authority. They had two goals: to move in the direction of a working monopolyÑor at least a royal supervisionÑof warlike violence within their realm, and to maintain vigorous leadership of the violence exported beyond the realm in the form of organized war. These royal goals inevitably entailed a complex pattern of cooperation and conflict between emerging kingship and emerging chivalry. Like powerful bar magnets turning at different speeds in close proximity, chivalry and kingship now drew each other together, now forced each other apart.

Yet on either side of the ChannelÑor at least within spheres dominated by the Capetians and the PlantagenetsÑkingship was rooted in specific historical circumstances and gathered its strengths and capacities on differing timetables. These important differences, as well as many shared characteristics, shape the chapters of Part Three. Common features, particularly well illustrated in French chivalric literature, appear in Chapter 5, which only begins to sketch out differences between Capetian and Plantagenet political culture. Chapter 6 takes up the case of chivalry and English kingship, emphasizing differences. As so often, the particularities of English political and social circumstances repay separate, close investigation.

5

CHEVALERIE AND ROYAUTƒ

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Royal Stance on War and Violence

Powerful images of the fellowship of Arthur and his companions gathered at the Round Table point us towards the genuine shared interests of kings and knights. Yet this Arthurian literature, with its dŽnouement of destructive conßict, likewise suggests tensions and contradictions between royalty and chivalry. This chapter examines both lines of force.

By right and duty kings were assumed to work to secure basic order in society. Even though they might prove ineffectual or even troublesome in that role, they settled disputes, were supposed to protect property, and promoted honour; they operated a legal system of courts and ofÞcials that knights clearly found useful.

Chivalric literature openly endorses this royal role in law and justice.1 A wise man-at-arms in the Lancelot do Lac provides a classic statement of the right and responsibility of royalty: Ô[E]veryone would be disinherited and ruined if King Arthur were overthrown,Õ he says, Ôbecause the stability of all of us is his concern.Õ2 The Story of Merlin, takes the same line, asserting that able kings secure order. The text relates that rebellions against ArthurÕs father, Uther Pendragon, had increased with the kingÕs age and weakness.3 The Lancelot makes a similar point: the land was sorely troubled by disorders, while Arthur was imprisoned by the False Guinevere: ÔNow seeing their land without a master, the barons began to war with one another, though this was unbearable to the worthy and noble among them who sought only the general good.Õ4 On his quest in The Marvels of Rigomer, Lancelot enters a land he learns is rife with

1 In addition to the texts cited below, see two fascinating discussions: Elspeth Kennedy on issues of royalty, chivalry, lineage, and prowess in the Lancelot do Lac in ÔQuest for IdentityÕ, and Roussineau on the Perceforest, chivalry, and the founding of the order of the Garter by Edward III in ÔEthique chevaleresqueÕ.

2 Elspeth Kennedy, ed., Lancelot do Lac, I, 35. The same sentiment is repeated in the cyclic version of the Lancelot story: Rosenberg, tr., Lancelot Part I, 17; Sommer, ed., Vulgate Version, II, 31.

3 Sommer, Vulgate Version, II, 77.

4 Rosenberg, tr., Lancelot Part III, 265: Sommer, Vulgate Version, IV, 51.

terror and conßict because of weak governance. The message is doubled when he is told that he should travel in a neighbouring land ruled well by a powerful king who is also a brave and noble knight who hangs robbers enthusiastically.5

The king as ideal fount of justice can blend with the king as ideal patron of chivalry. The Romance of Silence imagines this ideal partnership as its story opens:

Once upon a time Evan was king of England. He maintained peace in his land;

with the sole exception of King Arthur, there never was his equal

in the land of the English.

His rules were not just idle talk. . . .

He upheld justice in his realm; his people were no criminals. He maintained chivalry

and sustained young warriors by gifts, not empty promises.6

If they shared some ideals about peace and justice, kings and knights also shared war. Persistently, on both sides of the Channel, rulers and those who clustered around them acted on bellicose impulses, to which the political and military history of the period stands as plain witness. War involved the king as knight, with his knights. Of course it was never as simple as this. War also involved money, ships, mercenaries, and specialist engineers for the inevitable, grinding sieges; moreover, it did not closely involve all of the kingÕs knights. At the level of basic patterns of thought, however, royautŽ and chevalerie agreed on the inevitability and importance, even the desirability, of war. If kings thought more of politics where some knights were more concerned with prowess, both considered the proÞtsÑa completely honorable motiveÑand both thought war a characteristic and deÞning activity of their respective spheres, here joined in basic cooperation.

What becomes more interesting, then, is to ask about royal and chivalric attitudes towards war within the realm. What rules, if any, governed the possession of fortiÞcations, the open display of arms and the assertion of the right

5 Vesce, tr., Marvels of Rigomer, 53; Wendelin Foerster, ed., Mervelles de Rigomer, ll. 2365Ð84. Later in this romance a body of British knights overwhelms both sides in a private war and imposes peace: Vesce, ibid., 163; Foerster, ibid., ll. 7484Ð604. Giants who issue forth from their castle to ravage the countryside could easily be a symbol of lordly ravaging: Vesce, ibid., 192Ð3; Foerster, ibid., ll. 8869Ð9102.

6 Roche-Mahdi, ed., tr., Silence, 6Ð7.

to use them in ÔprivateÕ war? And what of tournament, which basically amounted to a form of war as chivalric sport?

Such topics involve fundamental issues of sovereignty, for kings increasingly claimed that warlike violence undoubtedly ranked among the signiÞcant areas over which they wanted some control.7

On both sides of the Channel successive kings worked sporadically, but with something like a sense of mission, to enforce a conception of peace that stemmed from a developing royal prerogative as well as a sense of duty rooted, Þnally, in the will of God.

Some scholars Þnd no tension at all, denying that kings could have much effect on issues of public order, or even took them seriously. Of course, no medieval government could truly supervise justice and guarantee public order throughout the realm, nor, for that matter, could any other government for a long time thereafter. Fears about governmental inability on this score have even surfaced in the contemporary world. Yet an essential dimension of the problem of public order drops from sight if we neglect the obvious royal impulse on both sides of the Channel to read sovereignty in no small measure in terms of the control of warlike violence, or at least to insist on a royal role in its direction and channelling. Whatever their success rate, whatever the complications of their own complicity, kings surely tried to effect a royal monopoly over licit violence, and the attempt is an undeniably important fact in early European history. Their work as sovereigns was complicated by two signiÞcant facts: kings, too, were knights and generally believed in a code that enshrined violence; and they needed the knights as part of their administrations and as a key element in their military force.

Yet the sense of responsibility for public order and the drive for sovereignty were real enough and brought royal encroachment on the independence of knights, especially those inclined to engage in heroic violence.8 In the biography of William Marshal the author moans that, in his day, chivalry has been imprisoned; the life of the knight errant, he charges, has been reduced to that of the litigant in courts.9

Even when desired and accepted, royal justice could be partial and imperfect. Caution is especially strong in earlier French works, as effective kingship is just emerging. The king, who in many a chanson reigns even when he does not effectively rule, creates endless problems by unwise and immoral

7 See Strayer, Medieval Origins and Kaeuper, War, Justice, and Public Order.

8 The anthropologist Julian Pitt-Rivers catches the ambiguity nicely by noting that Ôwhile the sovereign is the Òfount of honourÓ in one sense, he is also the enemy of honour in another, since he claims to arbitrate in regard to itÕ: ÔHonour and Social StatusÕ, 30.

9 Meyer, ed., Histoire, ll. 2686Ð92.

distribution of Þefs; his foolishness sets up the seemingly endless cycles of violence in Raoul de Cambrai, for example.10 Arthur himself sometimes needs reminding of his royal role in the maintenance of justice. In the crisis of his quarrel with Galehaut, the Wise Man tells Arthur he must truly give the justice God entrusted to him with the dominion he holds. Later in this same romance we Þnd a chastened Arthur dutifully holding admirable courts of law: Ôas soon as the case was heard, the right had to be upheldÕ.11

Even when impartial, royal justice could intrude on knightly honour defended by prowess. More than one knight Þnds himself charged with murder in a case of killing he considers fully justiÞed and honourable. Even the poor but honourable knight whom Robin Hood helps in the Geste of Robyn Hood was impoverished as a result of defending his son in court after the young man had killed another knight and a squire in a tournament.12

An even more revealing case appears when GuinevereÕs father, King Leodagan, Ôwho was a good ruler and lawgiverÕ, condemns the knight Bertelay. Though Bertelay had slain another knight, it was only after following the proper formsÑbreaking faith with the man and openly threatening him with death.13 Asked about the killing,

[Bertelay] answered that he would indeed defend himself against anyone who called him a criminal: ÔI do not say I did not kill him, but I did break faith with him Þrst. . . .

So, as I see it, a man should harm his deadly enemy in all the ways he canÑafter he has broken faith with him.Õ

The defence is, of course, that of Ganelon in the Chanson de Roland of perhaps a century earlier: taking revenge against an enemy openly is no crime against a king. What have kings to do with this anyway? CharlemagneÕs answer in the great epic, validated by a trial by combat which reveals the will of God, emphasizes public good over private revenge and leads to GanelonÕs terrible death as a traitor.14 King LeodaganÕs position, though milder, would have pleased Charlemagne; the king told Bertelay Ôthat he was mistaken, Òbut if you had come to me and brought suit against him, I would not have ruled against you; then you could have taken vengeance. But you did not Þnd me worthy enough to seek justice from me.Ó Õ BertelayÕs reply assures personal loyalty but asserts private right: Ô ÒSir,Ó he said, Òsay what you will, but I have never done you any

10Kay, ed., tr., Raoul de Cambrai. Any of the chansons in the Cycle of Rebel Barons could make the point, as could many from the Cycle of William of Orange.

11See Carroll tr., Lancelot Part II, 120Ð1, 150Ð1; Sommer, ed., Vulgate Version, III, 217Ð20, 271.

12See the Geste of Robyn Hood, Fytte One, stanzas 52Ð3 in Knight and Ohlgren, eds, Robin Hood.

13The following is drawn from Pickens, tr., Story of Merlin, 339Ð41; Sommer, Vulgate Version, II, 310Ð13.

14Brault, ed., tr., Chanson de Roland, laisses 270Ð91.

wrong, nor will I ever, God willing.Ó Õ But King LeodaganÕs court, made up for this case of King Arthur, King Ban, King Bors, and seven distinguished knights, orders Bertelay to be disinherited and exiled. King Ban, speaking for the court, states the key to their decision: ÔThe reason is that he took it upon himself to judge the knight he killed, and at night, but justice was not his to mete out.Õ Bertelay goes off into exile, accompanied by Ôa most handsome following of knights to whom he had many times given Þne gifts, for he had been a good and strong knightÕ.15

Other leading characters are occasionally drafted to speak out on behalf of a recourse to the courts. Though the false Guinevere episode puts her in peril, the true queen upholds the ideal monarchical role regarding justice, even against her own immediate interests. When Galehaut offers to solve all her problems by taking the false queen by force, Guinevere stoutly speaks up for a system of justice administered in the courts and against violent self-help: ÔI will not, please God, allow that. I donÕt seek to be defended against her accusation by anything but the law, and I wonÕt ever, please God, be tempted by sinful means but will wholly accept the kingÕs judgement.Õ16

Even Lancelot informs a knight whom he encounters that it is not right for one knight to pass judgement on another single-handedly; he should prove his case in a court.17 The principle is interesting, and runs directly counter to Ramon LlullÕs assertion that good knights should simply eliminate the bad.18 Of course Lancelot gives advice he does not follow himself, for he marks the trail of his adventures with the broken bodies of evildoers.

Early in the Merlin Continuation (much concerned with ÔÞrstsÕ, with the origins of chivalric customs) a squire asks Arthur to take vengeance for his lord, killed in what the king calls the Þrst of Ôthese trials of one knight against anotherÕ. The squire tells Arthur that as king, by GodÕs grace, he has sworn to right Ôthe misdeeds that anyoneÑa knight or any other personÑdid in the landÕ. Arthur goes in person to confront the killer, who turns out to be Pellinor. Before the inevitable joust, Arthur and Pellinor assert contradictory views about individual right and royal responsibility: ÔSir knight, who told you to keep the passage of this forest in such a way that no knight, native or

15Cf. Rosenberg, tr., Lancelot Part III, 263 and Sommer, ed., Vulgate Version, ed., IV, 46, where BertelayÕs hatred is connected with his role in the False Guenevere episode. In Lancelot Part I King Bors of Gaunes, who disinherited Pharian because of such a death, is called Ôof all men one of the most bent on justiceÕ: Rosenberg, tr., Lancelot Part I, 10; Sommer, Vulgate Version, III, 17.

16Rosenberg, tr., Lancelot Part III, 264; Sommer, Vulgate Version, IV, 48.

17Rosenberg, Lancelot Part I, 91; Sommer, Vulgate Version, III, 172; Elspeth Kennedy, ed.,

Lancelot do Lac, I, 222.

18Byles, ed., Book of the Ordre of Chyvalry, 27Ð30, 49. Llull thought of knights as governors themselves, and gave little attention to any mechanisms by which their own excesses or crimes might be checked.