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

the death; he wants to decapitate all those whom he has unhorsed. His ferocity disrupts this tournament and his subsequent tour of the tournament circuit across France spreads terror; back in Normandy, he renews his assaults on clerics (ll. 275Ð322).37

The action comes to a climax as he attacks a nunnery. If Robert plays Raoul here, re-enacting the infamous scene at Origny from Raoul de Cambrai, he descends even deeper into the pit of sin by personally thrusting his sword into the breasts of the nuns, killing Þfty of the sixty religious with his own hands, before setting the torch to the structures (ll. 341Ð52).38

At this point, the blood-red tide begins slowly to turn.39 Robert Þnds himself alone before the scene of desolation. The loud neighing of his warhorse reverberates. None of his men will answer his call, even when summoned by name. Falling into unaccustomed introspection, he wonders about the course of his life and its relationship to his birth; with the aid of the Holy Spirit, he dimly realizes he could yet be GodÕs friend, and goes, soaked in blood, to see his fearful mother; with threats, he Þnally extracts the painful truth from her (ll. 353Ð468). In Sir Gowther, recognition that he has been formed in evil by his Þendish father comes from a wise old duke whose observations send Gowther to his mother, from whom he gets the truth, told with the dreaded falchion poised over her heart (ll. 205Ð33).

Weeping with sorrow and shame, Robert/Gowther experiences conversion. He will rid himself of devilish inßuence; he will go to Rome to seek absolution from the pope himself. In the French romance he symbolically throws away his sword and cuts his hair before setting off for Rome (ll. 465Ð8).40 Yet his sins are so great, he learns in a hard-won papal audience, that even the pontiff cannot set penance, nor yet can that archetypical Þgure of chivalric romance, the holy hermit, to whom the pope sends him.41 It takes a hand from heaven, bearing a little script, to establish what Robert must do: until released from the penance, he must play the fool, provoking violence and derision in the streets; he must play the mute, speaking not a word; he must eat only what he can

37Thoms, ed., Early English Prose Romances, 175Ð7.

38The early sixteenth-century text has Robert violate the sacred bond between knight and hermit: Robert slays seven holy hermits and goes to see his mother, covered in their blood: l. 180.

39Ms. B of Robert le Diable emphasizes the bloodiness of the slaughter: Lšseth, ed., Robert le Diable, 26. In Wynkyn de WordeÕs version, Robert shows his change of life by killing all his company of robbers before setting off for Rome. He deposits the keys to his forest robberÕs nest, his horse, and his sword with the head of an abbey he had Ômany tymes robbedÕ: Thoms, Early English Prose Romances, 184Ð6.

40In Sir Gowther he retains the falchion, as discussed below.

41In the Wynkyn de Worde text the pope tells Robert (whose evil reputation he knows) that he will ÔassoyleÕ him, but wants a promise Ôthat ye do no man harmeÕ. Robert promises, ÔI will neuer hurte Crysten creatureÕ: Thoms, Early English Prose Romances, 187.

wrest from a dogÕs mouth (ll. 490Ð885).42 This heaven-sent burden bears a clear message: Robert must willingly suffer at least a few sparks of the raging ßames of violence he had inßicted on others and experience the slow burn of shame; he must resolutely dethrone his heedless pride.43 The several texts elaborately detail how thoroughly Robert/Gowther embraces and then for years fulÞls this penance, in full public view, in the streets of Rome and in the emperorÕs hall.

Then the Turks invade and all is thrown into confusion. Upon each of three threats to Rome by the SultanÕs army, Robert/Gowther receives horse and arms from heaven (either in response to his silent prayer, as in the French and Middle English romances, or by direct divine command, according to Wynkyn de Worde). Only the emperorÕs mute daughter from her chamber window witnesses the transformation of the fool into the saviour/knight. Dressed in white armour and mounted on a white charger, the hero performs wonders of prowess against the enemy in the Þeld, saving Rome three times in a row by emptying saddles, shearing off arms and legs, and spilling brains.44 Each time he then returns, divests himself of knightly horse and arms, and becomes again the humble and unknown penitent.45 All imperial efforts to detain and identify the white knight fail; the effort after the third battle even results in Robert being wounded by Roman knights who would take him to their chief (ll. 3414Ð500).

Resolution follows swiftly. The emperorÕs mute daughter miraculously begins to speak and is at last enabled plainly to say the truth about the fool in the hall who is actually the White Knight. She produces as material proof the lance-head which had wounded the knight, and which she had watched him hide after he had painfully removed it. When the holy hermit releases Robert from his penance, he joyfully tells his story openly (ll. 4490Ð866). In Sir Gowther, the princess, who has steadily loved Gowther throughout his stay at court, is given the privilege of pronouncing GodÕs forgiveness on him. Gowther happily marries her and, upon the death of the emperor, takes the crown himself, instituting a reign of peace and justice:

42Sir Gowther pictures the pope himself absolving Gowther and setting his penance, which is condensed to two elements: silence and eating only what he can take from dogs. The Wynkyn de Worde text is closer to the French romance, but the penance comes to the hermit in a dream.

43Wynkyn de Worde draws the moral explicitly: ÔNow haue this in your myndes, ye proude hertes and synners, thynke on Roberts grete penaunce and wylfull pouerte and how he so grete a gentylman borne . . . hathe all forsaken for the saluacyon of his souleÕ: Thoms, ed., Early English Prose Romances, 191.

44Gowther even rescues the emperor himself and decapitates the Sultan: ll. 625Ð31.

45The Middle English text gives him, on successive days of battle, black, red, and white armour. Some scholars have suggested a progressive process of purging. See Marchalonis, ÔSir GowtherÕ, 20Ð3.

270 The Ambivalent Force of Chivalry

What mon so bydus hym for Godys loffe doo

He was ey redy bown theretoo,

And stod pore folke in styd,

And ryche men in hor ryght,

And halpe holy kyrke in all is myght (ll. 715Ð19).

(He was always ready for love of God to do what people asked, and supported both the poor, and the rights of the powerful).46

The text printed by Wynkyn de Worde similarly ends with worldly as well as spiritual happiness. Robert is even commanded by God to marry the princess. He brings her to Normandy where he secures the peace, hanging a troublesome knight who had bothered his mother after the death of his father. A message from Rome hurries Robert there with an armed force to save the emperor from his wicked seneschal. Though he cannot arrive in timeÑthe seneschal has already slain the emperor in battleÑRobert does split the wicked traitorÕs head down to the teeth with one of his great sword blows and so saves Rome yet again. He rules well over rich and poor alike. As a Þnal boon, Robert and his wife give Christendom a champion in their son who joins Charlemagne in the endless Þght against pagan forces.47

The French romance ends more starkly. Robert announces he has left the world and will for nothing endanger his soul by re-entering it for even a day. He rejects the appeal of four knights who have come from Normandy to tell him of strife after the death of his parents there; he sets aside the Roman princess and the claim to the imperial crown; and he goes to live with the holy hermit outside Rome. He follows in that saintly manÕs steps upon the hermitÕs death. For the rest of his life Robert serves God, who does many miracles for him. At his death the Romans bury him with reverence in the church of St John Lateran. Years later, a Frenchman, who has come to a council held to make peace in many wars, takes RobertÕs bones to a site near Le Puy and builds an abbey over the new tomb. It is called the Abbey of St Robert (ll.

4490Ð5078).

For all their variance in detail, all three texts speak forcefully to a fear that knightly prowess and pride, especially when spurred by the heedless energies of youth, will turn to disruptive and destructive violence. The very devil is in it. The best hope, the authors agree, lies in the shaping and restraining force of religious ideals.

46In the early sixteenth-century text the hermit releases Robert from his penance (as in the French romance) and allows him to marry the princess (as in the Middle English romance): see Thoms, ed., Early English Prose Romances, 199Ð203.

47Ibid., 202Ð6.

exercised in unparalleled wickedness; all change his practice of violence by the end, and transform him into something much more socially and spiritually desirable, the proportions in the reformed knight varying with the author.

Not every romance pressed a plan of improvement upon knighthood with the intensity and the skill of those we have considered in this chapter. The quest pattern could easily become an interlace of episodic adventures without the spiritual or social critique or the hopes for reform evident in our several examples. Yet the idea of quest remains basic, and the tension between sets of high ideals and the obviously more tawdry reality in need of reform is nearly always present, always working, in romance. As W. R. J. Barron writes:

To the fundamental human concerns of the folk-tale, the romance proper adds a social ideal based not upon life as it is known through the senses but as the imagination, inspired by a vision of what might be rather than by objective fact, dreams of it. . . . It is not satisÞed with the trappings of realism but strives for the conviction that the world it projects has existed in some past golden age, or will be in some millennium to come, or might be if men were more faithful to ideals than experience suggests them capable of being.51

51 Barron, English Medieval Romance, 4.

Raoul says that the very name chevalerie is full of Ôsuch loftiness and dignityÕ, that, Ôrightly speaking, [it] is the true name of nobilityÕ. Only knights drink from the inexhaustible, divine fountain of courtesy: Ôit came from God and knights possess itÕ (ll. 11Ð15, 25).

Because of its very loftiness, it stands so far above all other lofty names, that if they were to recognize its lofty nature, they would not dare to do some things they now do.Ñ Why?ÑOut of shame. But they are not aware of the exigencies of their name, for a man may take himself for a knight though he know not what appertains to the name, save only ÔI am a knightÕ. (ll. 40Ð9)

He thinks it Ôindisputably true that they should be such as their name saysÕ. Yet Ômany have no understanding of knighthoodÕ. He is speciÞcally worried that the dominance of prowess in the thinking of knights will drive out two other qualities that he wants to see held in great esteem: liberality and courtesy. He tries to be careful, but his enthusiasm carries him along:

Do I mean to say that there is such a thing as a wicked knight? By no means, but some are at the least worth more than the others, whatever the case; and there are many such who are so superior in prowess that they do not deign to exercise liberality, but rather trust so much to their prowess that pride strikes them at once.Õ (ll. 27Ð8, 116Ð26)

He imaginatively recreates the thinking of such a man: ÔWhy give? What can they say about me? Am I not he of the great shield? I am he who has conquered all, I am the best of my kind, I have surpassed Gavain in armsÕ (ll. 128Ð34). To such prideful knights, obsessed with prowess, Raoul responds:

Ah, lords, whatever anyone may say, it is no part of knighthood for a knight to despise liberality on account of his prowess, for to tell the truth, no-one can rise to lofty esteem by means of prowess unless that prowess has two wings; and I will tell you what the matter and manner of those two wings ought to be. (ll. 135Ð43)

The treatise does just that, providing detailed explanations of seven feathers on the right wing of liberality, seven on the left wing of courtesy.

Raoul fears that an excessive belief in prowess in his own time will reduce the largesse so important to chivalry; signiÞcantly, his great enemy is the miser, where Geoffroi de CharnyÕs is the cowardly and inactive man. From the right wing the knight learns that he must be courageous in liberality, give to rich and poor alike, spend without care for landed wealth (saying, ÔA knight, God protect me, will not rise to great heights if he enquires of the value of cornÕ), give what is promised, promptly and liberally, and provide Þne feasts.

The left wing is also composed of seven feathers, each a speciÞc component of courtesy. The knight must honour and guard Holy Church, avoid pride; refrain from boasting (he should Ôstrike high and talk lowÕ), enjoy good enter-

tainment, avoid envy, avoid slander (since simultaneous physical and verbal feats are an impossibility), and be a lover and love truly for loveÕs sake (ll. 144Ðend).3

As Keith Busby, the editor of the text, has suggested, the message is Ôlargely social, and it concentrates on telling knights how to behave rather than elaborating on the symbolic signiÞcance of knighthoodÕ. Though the poem makes its case in religious and moral terms, it Ôcould not be called essentially religiousÕ.4 So close is its link with topics we have discussed that we might safely call the poem reformist.

The Book of the Order of Chivalry

Ramon Llull wrote the most popular handbook, The Book of the Order of Chivalry, probably between 1279 and 1283.5 It reached a wide readership in its original Catalan (Libre qui es de lÕordre de cavalleria); in French translation (Livre de lÕordre de chevalerie) it reached an even wider audience, before being translated into English and transcribed into print by Caxton (The Book of the Ordre of Chyvalry) in the last quarter of the Þfteenth century.6

Llull was the ideal person to write a handbook for knights. He began his adult life as a knight himself and was thoroughly immersed in chivalric culture and literature before experiencing the great conversion, probably in 1263, that sent him on a radically new course. After recurrent divine visitations he became a mystic, a systematic and proliÞc philosopher, a missionary for the conversion of Muslims and Jews, and one of the founding Þgures of Catalan literature. But he apparently never became a cleric, however close he was to the Franciscans in thought and life.7

The showy, easily remembered, and often quoted statements in his book are all in praise of knighthood, even of the sort of knighthood that clerical critics might view through narrowed eyes as merely Ôearthly chivalryÕ. Llull likes and praises it all: jousts and tournaments, war in defence of oneÕs lord, the liberal life of hall and hunting.

The thin story frame for his treatise is built around that stock Þgure the wise old hermit whoÑwe learn with no surpriseÑturns out to be a former knight. A young seeker after chivalry encounters him by his fountain, asks questions, and receives not only a lecture but also a reading assignment, a little book that

Works, I, 3Ð52.

he will take to court for the instruction of all. It is, of course, the very book the reader holds. The hermit, now pale and ascetic, had formerly been the sort of hero with whom any knight could identify: Ô[He] had long maintained the order of chivalry and done so by the force and nobleness of his high courage and wisdom and in adventuring his body had maintained just wars, jousts and tourneys and in many battles had many noble and glorious victories.Õ8

On such honourable men Llull can scarcely lavish enough praise. They form an ordo alongside that of the clerics and rank only a little lower than those whose hands produce GodÕs body on the altar. If only these two high orders could be free of error, Llull says, the world would be all but free from error. The knights, if anything, ought to be advanced in honour. Ideally, each knight should have a kingdom or province to rule, an honour prevented only by the unfortunate shortage of suitable territories. Certainly, knights would make excellent judges, if only they were learned, and chivalry is, in itself, so high a subject that it ought to be taught in schools. There can be no doubt that knights are the natural counsellors for kings and princes; to advance the nonknightly to such positions is an offence against chivalry, which produces the men best qualiÞed for rule, best Þt for distributing justice. In his Ars Brevis, Llull in fact deÞnes chivalry as Ôthe disposition with which the knight helps the prince maintain justiceÕ.9

Llull introduces his general theme by telling a myth of origins. It is a story of a fall and a redemption through chivalry.10 At issue are all the basic matters concerned with securing right order in the world. The myth relates that at some point in the swirling mists of the past the great virtuesÑcharity, loyalty, truth, justice, and verityÑhad fallen, producing injuries, disloyalty, and falseness, with social consequences of error and trouble in the world. Fearing disorder and injustice, the populace divided itself into thousands and from each chose the best man to be a knight; they likewise selected the horse as the best beast to carry him in his work.11 From that time forward the knight has carried out a high and essential mission: he secures order in the world. For fear of him the common people hesitate to do wrongs to each other; for fear of him they till the soil. Just as the clerks (who are brought into the myth without expla-

8 My translation of Caxton, in Byles, ed., Book of the Ordre of Chyvalry, 3Ð4.

9 Bonner, Selected Works, I, 624. See also his knightÕs comment (to a hermit questioning him) in the Arbre de Ciencia: ÔDix lo cavaller que ell mantenia cavalleria ab lÕespasa del rei, qui fa estar comuna la sua coronaÕ: Ramon Llull. Obres Essenciales, I, 903.

10The similarity between this account and that in the earlier pre-cyclic prose Lancelot is interesting. See Elspeth Kennedy, ed., Lancelot do Lac, I, 142.

11Any medieval reader familiar with contemporary learning on the Corpus Juris Civilis might at this point hear echoes of the Lex Digna Vox, which asserted that at some point in the mythic past the people had given up their natural sovereignty to the Roman emperors. See Byles, Book of the Ordre of Chyvalry, 113. for an even more strikingly similar statement by Llull.

nation, since it is not their myth) incline the people to devotion and the good life, the knights ensure the order that makes civilized life possible.12

Llull makes this same point in slightly different terms in his Felix (though here he reverses the roles of hermit and knight). In response to the hermitÕs quizzing him about what a knight is, Ôthe knight replied that a knight was a man chosen to ride on horseback to carry out justice and to protect and safeguard the king and his people so that the king could reign in such a manner that his subjects could love and know GodÕ.13 Yet such praise is only half the picture. Although Llull nearly worshipped chivalry as an ideal, his Þrst-hand knowledge of knighthood as it worked in the world shaped everything he says about it. In fact, his love for chivalry as it might be never eradicates his deep fear of chivalry as social fact. In the Book of Contemplation, for example, he refers to knights as Ôthe DevilÕs ministersÕ, and asks pointedly, ÔWho is there in the world who does as much harm as knights?Õ14 At one point in the Tree of Science he pictures a hermit asking a knight if he understands the order of chivalry. The knight explains that in the absence of a book on the subject he does not, in fact, understand chivalry. Were there such a book, the knight adds, Ômany knights would be humble who are prideful, and just who are criminal [injurioses], and chaste who are licentious, and brave who are cowardly, and rich who are poor, and honourable who are dishonourableÕ.15 Llull here, of course, clearly if indirectly announces a rationale for the book on chivalry which he himself wrote; in the process, he explicitly establishes the reforming nature of his book. Knights can and must be made better in basic categories of their lives.

Llull knows that he is in a sense whistling past the graveyard in The Book of the Order of Chivalry. It will be difÞcult to refashion the men who cause so much disorder into effective upholders of order. Each gilded wine goblet that Llull raises to toast knighthood thus contains a bitter residue of criticism. The basic dichotomy appears in advice given by the hermit within the very myth of origins:

Beware, squire, who would enter into the order of chivalry what you shall do. For if you become a knight you receive honour and the servitude due to the friends of

12The myth is elaborated in LlullÕs second chapter.

13Bonner, Selected, II, 668Ð9. In his Ars Brevis, Llull says in the same vein: ÔChivalry is the disposition with which the knight helps the prince maintain justiceÕ: in ibid., I, 624.

14Quoted in Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, 60. The Catalan, kindly supplied in correspondence from Professor Hilgarth, reads: ÔE doncs, S•nyer, qui Žs lo mon qui tant de mal fa•a com cavallers?Õ

15Ramon Llull. Obres Essencials, 903: ÔDix lo cavaller que ell no sabia lÕordre de cavaleria, e blasmava son pare qui escrit no lÕhavia; car si era fet un libre de lÕart de cavalleria, molts cavallers serien humils qui son ergulloses, e justs qui son injurioses, e casts qui son luxurioses, e ardits qui son volpells, e rics qui son pobres, e honrats qui son deshonrats.Õ