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

about licit and illicit violence and the authority for setting those categoriesÑ even as they enthusiastically raised banners of war themselves.

As Europeans moved into one of the most signiÞcant periods of growth and change in their early history, they increasingly found the proud, heedless violence of knights, their praise for settling any dispute by force, for acquiring any desired goal by force on any scale attainable, an intolerable fact of social life. Such violence and disorder were not easily compatible with other facets of the civilization they were forming.

We will misunderstand chivalry if we fail to set it squarely in the context of this knightly violence so evidently in the minds of all our witnesses or if we miss the linkage of this issue with the broader search for that degree of order essential to the creation of high medieval society. This context sets the tone, and, as Maurice Keen has sagely observed, the meaning of chivalry is to a signiÞcant degree tonal.58 By placing chivalry within this context, we can move beyond microanalysis, close attention to the evidence of chivalric ideals in the careers of individual knights, and engage in macroanalysis, considering the social effects of chivalry and speciÞcally its complex role in public order.

Insisting on the very complexity of that role, this book parts company with much scholarship that has characterized chivalry in less problematic terms, as a positive and less ambiguous force for building an ordered society. The following chapters will argue that medieval evidence on chivalry and order is Þlled with tension and contradiction. Among its contemporaries, chivalry won high praise as one of the very pillars of medieval civilization, indeed, of all civilization. At the same time the practitioners of its great virtue, prowess, inspired fear in the hearts of those committed to certain ideals of order. As they worried about the problem of order in their developing civilization, thoughtful medieval people argued that chivalry (reformed to their standards) was the great hope, even as they sensed that unreformed chivalry was somehow the great cause for fear. How chivalry could be praised to the heavens at the same time it could be so feared as a dark and sinister force with ßaming weaponry makes a topic worth investigating.

58 Keen, Chivalry, 2.

2

EVIDENCE ON CHIVALRY AND

ITS INTERPRETATION

ddd

OUR investigation can rely in part on the kinds of evidence long used by historiansÑchronicles and judicial records, for example. But this book will draw heavily on the evidence available in the vast body of chivalric literary

texts, a rich source much less frequently (and certainly less comprehensively) used by historians. It is a species of evidence that can provoke doubts and misgivings.1

Did Knights Read Romance?

We must Þrst be certain knights actually attended to works of imaginative literature, either by reading or listening.2 Of the various kinds of writing within the rubric of chivalric literature only the works traditionally classed as romance are in question.3 No one doubts that chivalric biography, chanson de geste, and

1 Elspeth Kennedy, ÔThe Knight as ReaderÕ. See also Duby, preface to Flori, LÕIdŽologie du glaive. Jacques le Goff, in his introduction to Boutet and Strubel, LittŽrature, politique et sociŽtŽ, 18, argues: Ô[L]es historiens Žprouvent de plus en plus le besoin dÕintegrer dans leur champ documentaire le document littŽraire et prennent conscience du double caract•re de lÕoeuvre littŽraire, ˆ la fois comme document spŽciÞque, document de lÕimaginaire, et comme document dÕhistoire totale, pour peu quÕon sache y dŽm•ler les relations compliquŽs de la sociŽtŽ, de la littŽrature et des pouvoirs.Õ As Spiegel writes, Ôtexts both mirror and generate social realities, are constrained by and constitute the social and discursive formations which they may sustain, resist, contest, or seek to transformÕ: ÔHistory, HistoricismÕ, 77. Strohm, discussing problems of reading texts, rightly calls ÔliteraryÕ and ÔhistoricalÕ texts Ôoutworn categorizationÕ: HochonÕs Arrow, 3Ð9. I occasionally use such terms in this book only as traditional categories.

2 More may have heard than read. As Asher notes, in the Merlin Continuation, Ôthere are only two references to reading the story instead of hearing it . . . (273, n. 8).Õ However, as Clanchy has demonstrated, lay literacy was much higher than we once thought: From Memory to Written Record. Hindman discusses these issues for ChrŽtienÕs romances in Sealed in Parchment.

3 No rigid separation of chanson and romance is suggested. Current scholarship blurs older categories of chanson de geste and romance, emphasizing rough coincidence in time and space and increasing broad similarities. Calin provides a good introduction to this theme, with many citations, in A Muse for Heroes and in ÔRapport introductifÕ. Cf. Kibler, ÔChanson dÕaventureÕ and Maddox, ÔFigures romanesquesÕ. Kay argues for essential difference with a dialogic relationship between genres: Chansons de Geste. The relationship of chivalry to growing governmental

vernacular manuals of chivalry were written for knights and read or heard by knights. But what of the extensive body of romance?

As Elspeth Kennedy has shown, knights in the very real world referred frequently and familiarly to these works of literature. A Ôtwo-way trafÞcÕ connected these men of war, law, and politics with Arthurian romance no less than chanson de geste. Many owned copies of these texts, which seem to have been readily passed from one set of hands to another, often registering considerable wear.4 Some, such as the father of the famous jurist Philippe de Beaumanoir, even wrote romance themselves.5 Under Isabella and Mortimer, the English Privy Wardrobe issued works of romance to male and female courtiers alike; Mortimer himself borrowed twenty-three such works and must have sponsored a romance-reading group.6 Geoffroi de Charny, the leading French knight of the mid-fourteenth century, apparently knew romances like the Lancelot do Lac and wrote easily (and disapprovingly) of men who would love Queen Guinevere only if they could boast of it.7 In addition to borrowing heavily from the imagery of the Ordene de chevalerie (Order of Chivalry; one of the vernacular manuals for knights), Ramon Llull, the former knight who wrote the most popular book on chivalry in the Middle Ages, likewise drew heavily on thirteenth-century prose romances.8

Romance and other categories become indistinguishable in the minds of those who wrote and those who read. The authors of historical works sense no gap between the actions they describe in chronicle or biography and those in imaginative literature; often they stress the links between the types of writing.9 The author of the Norman-French ÔSong of Dermot and the EarlÕ, written around 1200, sometimes says his work is based on a geste and refers to it both as le chansun and lÕhistoire. He records Maurice FitzGerald defending an Irish king and, like a hero from romance, swearing on his sword that anyone who

institutions is especially noticeable in chansons de geste. Works traditionally classed as romances focus on a deepening knightly piety which must address the Þt of its ideals with those of clergie. Yet these themes are far from exclusive and topics inevitably overlap in particular works of chivalric literature. See Chapters 11, 12.

4 Kelly (Structural Study, 20) notes that manuscripts of the Perlesvaus, for example, were owned by chivalric Þgures, not monks. Hindman comments on borrowed and worn manuscripts of ChrŽtienÕs romances in Sealed in Parchment, 3, 8Ð9, 46Ð8.

5 Gicquel, ÔLe Jehan le BlondÕ.

6 Vale, Edward III, 49Ð50; Revard, ÔCourtly RomancesÕ. 7 Kaeuper and Kennedy, Book of Chivalry, 118Ð19.

8 Elspeth Kennedy, ÔKnight as ReaderÕ (typescript kindly provided in advance of publication). An additional example supporting her argument appears in Gutierre Diaz De Gamez, standardbearer and biographer of Don Pero Ni–o, who says he has been Ôreading . . . many histories of kings and famous knights,Õ and decides to add the deeds of his master to these accounts of other famous deeds: Evans, tr., The Unconquered Knight, 13.

9 See KeenÕs useful discussion of the broad question in Nobles, Knights and Men-at-Arms,

63Ð81.

lays a hand on the king would have his head split.10 John Barbour (d. 1395) terms his chronicle of Robert Bruce a ÔromanysÕ.11 Both Barbour and Sir Thomas Gray assure us that if all the deeds done in Ireland by RobertÕs brother Edward Bruce were set down they would make a Þne romance.12 Other active knights shared the sentiment. We even know that Robert Bruce often told Ôauld storysÕ to his men in trying times, to buck them up. During a tedious passage over Loch Lomond, he merrily read out passages from the romance of Fierabras.13

Moreover, the very content of the romances leads to the same conclusion. Anyone who has read thousands of pages of chivalric literature knows that either these texts were meant for men as well as women, or that medieval women simply could not get enough of combat and war, of the detailed effects of sword strokes on armour and the human body beneath, of the particulars of tenurial relationships, and of the tactical manouevres that lead to victory. Such evidence suggests that the great body of chivalric literature was aimed at knights even more than at their ladies.14

The knightsÕ conduct, of course, also shows that the literature is reaching them, as students of chivalry have shown in case after case.15 Larry D. BensonÕs examination of the tournament in the romances of ChrŽtien de Troyes and in the Histoire of William Marshal, for example, concluded that tournament wonderfully illustrates the interplay of life and artÑimpossible, of course, were knights not deeply steeped in chivalric romance as well as chanson.16

Knights, in sum, say that they have read this literature, which itself does not distinguish genres closely; they show that they have read it by using it in their

10Orpen, ed., tr., Song of Dermot, ll. 1065, 1912, 2115Ð20, 2403.

11McDiarmid and Stevenson, eds, BarbourÕs Bruce, bk. I, l. 446.

12Maxwell, tr., Scalacronica, 57. Gray says Bruce performed there Ôfeats of arms, inßicting great destruction upon both provender and in other ways, and conquered much territory which would form a romance were it all recountedÕ. What constitutes proper subject matter for romance is as instructive as the link between romance and history. Barbour says of Edward Bruce, Ôoff his hey worschip and manheid / Men mycht a myckill romanys mak.Õ McDiarmid and Stevenson, eds.

BarbourÕs Bruce, bk. IX, ll. 496Ð7.

13McDiarmid and Stevenson, eds, BarbourÕs Bruce, bk. IX, ll. 267Ð70, 405Ð65. Barbour refers to characters in the ÔRomance of AlexanderÕ in bk. III, ll. 72Ð92.

14For the Perlesvaus, Kelly reached a similar conclusion: Structural Study, 20, 23. As Elspeth Kennedy notes, male interests Ômay well have been directed towards different elements within the romanceÕ: ÔKnight as ReaderÕ, 1. Crouch suggests the young William Marshal would have known and perhaps memorized a body of chanson de geste and romance. His father was familiar with Geoffrey of Monmouth or one of his imitators: William Marshal, 23. Hindman notes that a scene in the romance of Hunbaut pictures a group of ten knights and six young ladies listening to the reading of a romance: Sealed in Parchment, 86.

15Good general accounts in Painter, French Chivalry and Keen, Chivalry. For speciÞc inßuences seeÑin addition to the Benson article cited in fn. 16Ñthree studies by Loomis: ÔArthurian InßuenceÕ, ÔChivalric and Dramatic ImitationsÕ, and ÔEdward IÕ.

16Benson, ÔThe TournamentÕ. Cf. Barber and Barker, Tournaments.

own writings, and they show by their actions that they have read it and are bringing it into their lives.

Is Chivalric Literature Hopelessly Romantic?

Such evidence makes it difÞcult to dismiss or discount chivalric literature as hopelessly romantic and useless in serious historical enquiry. We cannot expect this literature, or any other, to serve as a simple mirror to social reality in the world in which it emerged. Chivalric literature was an active social force, helping to shape attitudes about basic questions. As such, it has immense usefulness, if read with care.

Above all, we need to remember that these works are, in conscious intent at least, more often prescriptive than descriptive; they advance ideals for what chivalry should become, in other words, more often than they mirror an ideal already transformed into social reality.17 In The History of the Holy Grail, Joseph of Arimathea (considered a great knight of the era of Christ) is ordered by God to sire the son who will continue the line of knightly heroes that will culminate in the perfect knight, Galahad. This son, the text says,

was later such a worthy man that one should certainly recall his deeds and the nobility of his life in the hearing of all worthy men, so that the wicked will abandon their folly and worthy men, who hold the order of chivalry, may better themselves toward the world and God.18

The prescriptive impulse of much of this literature could scarcely be stated more openly.

Yet it is often descriptive as well, for the writers of chivalric literature regularly offer up descriptions of actual knightly practices from the world around them. These scenes are either given consciously, to show some behaviour in need of improvement, or unconsciously, while the writer is actually focusing on some other aspect of knightly life and behaviour.

Ordinary practice can always be recovered, if we are prepared to look carefully between lines written either prescriptively or descriptively. SpeciÞc critiques are directly revealing; even highly gilded passages of praise are indirectly revealing: we seldom preach virtues to replace non-existent faults. Of course the descriptive and prescriptive often come intertwined, almost sentence by

17As Barron suggested, ÔThe paradox of romance in all periods is that it expresses manÕs need to see life not as it is but as it might be, yet the very formulation of the ideal rests upon his awareness of personal and social imperfectionsÕ: ÔKnighthood on TrialÕ, 103.

18Chase, tr., History of the Holy Grail, 119; Hucher, ed., Le Saint Graal, III, 126Ð7. Galahad himself is later pictured as listening attentively to the stories told him by a holy hermit about his noble ancestors: see Asher, tr., Quest.

sentence. In fact, these categories blur readily into a third, the provocative. Our texts often toss out challenging opinions or incidents bound to spark debate in chamber or hall as more wine is poured and the company settles into a conversation we would give much to hear.19

We can, likewise, only regret that no medieval writer went from one castle, tourney Þeld, court, siege camp, battle line, or raiding party to another, observing and interviewing knights of all particular social claims to record their commonplace attitudes and beliefs; with such evidence we could easily differentiate their attitudes in varying degrees from the ideal statements and reform tracts which we possess in abundance.

Lacking such a record, we have no oral history of chivalry, although that is precisely what we want. For most chivalric texts press some ideal about chivalry to the forefront, with bright gold leaf liberally applied to the expressions.20 Almost unnoticed, our assumption can easily become that this is what chivalry was and how it actually worked in medieval society.

The hard truth is that we must reconstruct the living reality of chivalry from the entire set of texts available: the vast corpus of imaginative chivalric literature, as well as ecclesiastical and lay legislation, legal records, contemporary chronicles, handbooks for knights, the details of chivalric biography. Each piece of evidence we draw into this book will add its witness to our cumulative sense of just what chivalry was and just how knights thought about it. In the process we can gradually reconstruct something like the oral history that we would so much like to have.

Perhaps dazzled by the gold leaf, even the Þg leaf of idealization, textbook accounts of chivalry often fail to distinguish between various reform plans and actual practice; taking chivalry at the evaluation of its own idealistic texts, they place perhaps half a dozen ideal qualities for a knight in the spotlight. Anachronistic ideas from post-medieval revivals of chivalry easily creep into the pattern unnoticed. Chivalry thus becomes the composite, enduring ideal represented by courtesy, prowess (easily sanitized as moral courage), largesse, loyalty, Ôcourtly loveÕ, fairness, piety (even Ômuscular ChristianityÕ). There is no

19ScottÕs paradigmÑDominationÑlargely applies to other circumstances; yet his description of a Ôpublic transcript of dominanceÕ Þts much chivalric literature. As the Ôself-portrait of dominant elitesÕ (p. 18) intended to Ôawe and intimidate [subordinates] into a durable and expedient complianceÕ (p. 67), it is also aimed at Ôa kind of self-hypnosis within ruling groups, to buck up their courage, improve their cohesion, display their power, and convince themselves anew of their high moral purposeÕ (p. 67). The Achilles heel comes from Ôcritiques within the hegemonyÕ (p. 105) which are hard to deßect because Ôthey begin by adopting the ideological terms of reference of the elite . . . which now stands accused of hypocrisy if not the violation of a sacred trustÕ (p. 105).

20Morris observes, ÔIn truth one should think less of a code of chivalry than of conßicting ideals of chivalryÕ: ÔEquestris OrdoÕ, 96.

tension, no contradiction, no sense of any pressing social issues which might have generated criticism and debate in the Þrst place.

This venerable technique cannot be followed if we are to understand the broad societal role chivalry played for centuries. We must identify the major functions of chivalry as a social force, not merely draw up a list of idealized individual qualities, taken largely from works pressing for reforms.

Two straightforward conclusions follow. First, most medieval writing about chivalry will show a tendency to social criticism or even a reformist cast; it will be read more creatively and analytically with this in mind. Second, the direction of much of this writing points us towards the fundamental issue of securing order in society. In other words, if most chivalric literature involves criticism, debate, and reform, much of it was written in the shadow of fears for public order

This is not to suggest that authors of chivalric literature were cheerless critics, taking only the odd, scowling glance out of a study window at actual knighthoodÑto conÞrm their dislikeÑwhile grinding out works presenting one critique after another. To the contrary, this literature is animated by the diverse energies found in any great literature; every text will celebrate the glories of chivalry and will often overßow with sheer joy and appreciation for the richness, colour, and splendour of chivalric life. In the process, texts instruct knights how to be more suave and urbane, how to play the ideal lover as well as the perfect knight. In fact, they claim that chivalry (if only reformed to their liking) constitutes the very buttress which upholds civilized life.

Yet the steady social criticism, the urging of restraint and reform, can be heard constantly and insistently, despite the variety of other themesÑrather like the steady continuo playing behind other instrumental voices in a baroque concerto. This rich and contrapuntal play of praise and critique, hope and fear, emphasizes the powerful tensions as well as the harmonies at work. These tensions give a fascinating complexity to any piece of chivalric literature; the balancing act requires celebration of chivalry as the grand guide to civilized life, while simultaneously pressing with some degree of urgency for the changes that could make chivalry truly that force in the world. These are not purely celebratory or aesthetic works; they do not present merely the splendour of chivalric life as it was, or the diversions of an escapist literature of life as it never could be. These texts spoke to some of the most pressing issues of their day, especially to the issues of social order and knightly violence, to the serious need for chivalric reform in a world much troubled by warlike violence.

We cannot, in other words, take the line that in any problem linking knighthood and order, chivalry was simply the solution. What makes these issues so much more real and inÞnitely more interesting is that chivalry Þgures on both

specialized functions and elaborated an ideology which spurred and justiÞed their power and responsibility.

Each focal point thus represents through a cluster of enabling powers and ideas, a particular stance regarding the issue of order. Each is distinct, though none stands exclusively, unconnected with the others. In other words, between each pair of focal points (i.e. along each side of the triangle in Þgure 1) strong bonds of attraction are at work, as well as powerful forces of competition, imitation as well as independence, or even outright opposition.

Clergie indicates the impressive institutional and juridical organization of the Church from the bishop of Rome to the lowliest wearer of the tonsure. It entails the special mediatory relationship of priests, monks, and nuns who stand between God and the mass of humanity, the priests channelling from God the saving means of grace through the sacraments, and all, perhaps especially the regulars, offering up to God especially efÞcacious prayers about pressing human needs. But clergie also entails scholarship, the Latin learning of the schools with all the mysterious and arcane power of books and the resonances from the revered and Latinate world of antiquity.22 The idea of public order held by these men had been clear for centuries, at least when they thought about conditions within Christendom itself; from the late tenth century clerics had sponsored a peace movement that sought not simply the absence of endless local strife (though it necessarily began thus), but an embodiment of the divine will in a human society animated by harmonious (and hierarchical) social relationships. Organization, a body of special practitioners, special functions, a sphere of ideas glowing with powerÑall formed part of the world of clergie, all contributed to what we will see as its stance regarding proper order.

The second point of the triangle is not so easily labelled. RoyautŽ may serve as a term, meaning the emerging lay state with all of its powers, ideology, busy personnel, and important functions in society. These men claimed to secure the peace which represented the divine will for the world by making and

22 The knightly amalgam of awe and suspicion regarding such learning appears regularly in chivalric literature. Marsent and her nuns in Raoul de Cambrai try to stop the violence of Raoul by processing outside town walls carrying books, one so venerable it was revered in the age of Solomon. Kay, ed., Raoul de Cambrai, 82Ð3, ll. 1123Ð32. The power of even Merlin and Morgan le Fay is contained in books. Morgan is at one point termed Ôa very good woman clerkÕ: Sommer, ed., Vulgate Version, 253, ll. 19Ð20. Of Gamille, the Saxon Lady of the Rock, it is said, Ôwith all her books she could make water ßow uphillÕ: Carroll, tr., Lancelot Part II 236; Micha, ed., Lancelot, VIII, 481Ð2. Sir Kay burns all her books to ashes. The Duke of Cloyes is said to be so old and experienced that Ôhe had so much knowledge that only a man knowing Latin could have moreÕ: Rosenberg, tr., Lancelot Part III, 250; Micha, ed., Lancelot, I, 79. The lady rescued by Guinglain in Le Bel Inconnu had been turned into a serpent by an enchanter who touched her with a book; the text links magic and necromancy with the study of the liberal arts: see Fresco, ed., and Donagher, tr., Renaut de B‰gŽ, ll. 3341, 1931Ð6, 4933Ð47.