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

systems of belief stimulated inspired writing (as in The Quest of the Holy Grail, or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), more often the gap was simply, willfully, not seen. In a prologue to his translation of Christine de PisanÕs Epistle of Othea (c. 1440), Stephen Scrope assured Sir John Fastolf that God Ôys souuerayn cheyveten and knyght off all cheualrieÕ. Having spent most of his life in Ôdedys of cheualrie and actis of armisÕ, Fastolf should now turn to Ôgostly cheuallrieÕ to prepare himself for Ôthe ordre of knyghthode that schal perpetuelly endure and encrese in joye and worship endleseÕ.18 The key trait of knightly prowess wins divine approbation; disloyalty and anything leading to dishonour becomes sin, a moral and not merely a social blunder.

Earning honour by prowess appears throughout most chivalric literature as complementary to the worship of God. Approval for prowessÑat least for prowess in the right causesÑcomes not only from humans but descends from highest heaven. In fact, God opens wide the doors of paradise for his brave knights. Geoffroi de Charny cannot often enough or forcefully enough preach that prowess, like all good things, comes as a gift of God, that the Lord will welcome his good knights, those who use this great gift well, into paradise.19 By the time he wrote, in the mid-fourteenth century, the theme had been well developed. Promises of heavenly reward for crusaders punctuate both chansons de geste and historical accounts of crusade preaching. This valorization, as we will see, gradually became a blessing on all of knightly life.

The approbation of God appears time and again. Early in The History of the Holy Grail Seraphe (though he is still a pagan) receives the gift of great prowess from God. Fighting against the enemies of the early Christians, Ôno feat of arms could be compared to his prowess, performed with his hands, for he held a marvellously strong and sharp battle-axe in both handsÕ. Using this weapon, Ôhe cut strong shields, sliced thick hauberks, cleaved helmets and visors; he slashed feet, legs and arms; chests, heads, ribs and thighs; he bathed his battle-axe up to the shaft in the blood of men and horses.Õ Seraphe heroically keeps up the work even after he is unhorsed and trampled by two hundred horsemen. Christ himself, acting through the White Knight, supplies him with a new and even more efÞcient axe. As the White Knight announces, handing it over, ÔHere, Seraphe, this is sent to you by the True CruciÞed One.Õ20 If God supplies the weapons, he can also direct the blows. In the Didot Perceval Arthur splits the Roman emperor down to the waist with a great sword stroke delivered Ôwith the aid of GodÕ.21

20Chase, tr., History of the Holy Grail, 36Ð41. The White Knight himself, of course, performs marvellous Ôfeats of arms and chivalryÕ: p. 41; see also Sommer, ed., Vulgate Version, I, 56Ð65.

21Skells, tr., Perceval in Prose, 88; William Roach, ed., The Didot Perceval, 271.

The Almighty is pictured as a Þne judge as well as a general approver of prowess. The Ship of Faith that he sends to the three companions in The Quest of the Holy Grail carries a sword reserved for the knight with the greatest prowess; its blade bears the daunting message, written appropriately in bloodred letters, Ôthat none should be so bold as to draw the sword unless he was to strike better and more boldly than anyone elseÕ. The penalty for a failed attempt is injury or death.22 However much we spiritualize such a symbol, we must stop to consider its message at the most apparent level: God provides a test for determining the best knight, that is, the one with the greatest prowess, the divine gift to knighthood.23

God, as he appears in chivalric literature, likes knightly doing and daring, even if reformers were careful to picture him on their side. For his worthy knights, moreover, God supplies opportunities. Divine power holding the sunlight to give Charlemagne light for his bloody revenge after the death of Roland is only the most well-known case in point.24 Finding a beautiful glade, early in the Perlesvaus, PercevalÕs immediate, almost reßexive thought is that Ôtwo knights could joust well and handsomely on that groundÕ. He prays to God: Ôin your gentleness [let a knight appear] with whom I can test whether there is strength or valour or chivalry in me.Õ God sends one of the best, in fact, for Lancelot appears and the two nearly kill one another, though in Ôthe great rage that they bore each other and the great ardour of their will . . . they were hardly aware of their woundsÕ. Providentially, a hermit appears to end this conßict of uncle and nephew who, as always in such Þghts, recognize each other only after the combat has ended.25

Divine approval of prowess is often conveyed by saints or angels. Gabriel appears in Roland, for example, not only to carry away RolandÕs soul to its well-earned rest, but to urge on Charlemagne when his prowess slips a bit in hand-to-hand combat with the pagan Amiral. Dazed, his skull creased by a mighty sword blow, Charles hears Gabriel, standing like a coach by his side, demand, Ô ÒGreat King, what are you doing?Ó Õ Charlemagne quickly recovers and spills his opponentÕs brains.26 The Virgin Mary retrieves RainouartÕs great

22Chase, tr., History of the Holy Grail, 77Ð8, 83; Sommer, ed., Vulgate Version, VI, 121Ð4, 133Ð4. This is King DavidÕs sword, put on the marvellous ship by King Solomon. Divine power later wounds Nascien for drawing the sword unworthily. Chase, ibid., 97; Sommer, ibid., 163. Cf Matarasso, tr., Quest, 212Ð20; Pauphilet, ed., Queste, 200Ð8. The scabbard also bears a warning that ÔHe who wears me shall do greater deeds than any otherÕ, before it continues with a concise sermon on chastity.

23For symbolic interpretations, see Matarasso, Redemption of Chivalry, 65Ð7. Obviously, no unbelievers need apply; yet within the subset of the elect, the test involves prowess as well as piety.

24See Brault, ed., tr. Chanson de Roland, laisse 176.

25Bryant, tr., Perlesvaus, 92Ð3; Nitze and Jenkins, eds, Perlesvaus, 139Ð42.

26Brault, Chanson de Roland, laise 261.

the idea of a bargain between God and merely Ôearthly chivalryÕ than with the insistence on Ôheavenly chivalryÕ in the Quest.32 Geoffroi de Charny, too, would have at least understood Gawain, for all the piety he wrote into his Book of Chivalry, for all the reverence of the clergy he insisted upon in its pages.

Knightly lay piety, in short, involved an appreciable degree of practical lay independence; chivalry took on the valorizing mantle of religion without fully accepting the directive role claimed by ecclesiastics; it virtually absorbed religion for its own purposes, in no small measure on its own terms. Knights did not simply and obediently bow before clerical authority and, bereft of any ideas of their own, absorb the lessons and patterns for their lives urged by their brothers, sisters, and cousins bearing tonsures and veils. Knights thought they had an understanding with God, a contract which Þnally bypassed the troublesome clerics, even while paradoxically acknowledging their essential sacerdotal role.

The particular nature of their piety, then, and the way in which it combined their power in the world with the valorization of other-worldly approval helps explain the strength of chivalry. Admittedly, some men in any age seem to need no justiÞcation beyond the imperious surge of their own will; but perhaps most men in most ages act more conÞdently when they can feel that what they want to do is not so distant from what they should do. Such reassurance in chivalry came largely from the knightly appropriation of religion; chivalric piety acted not simply as a force in opposition to main currents of knightly life, but in consonance with them.

The appropriation shows up clearly in historical texts such as biographies and chronicles, and not merely in those relating crusading history. In the Song of Dermot and the Earl, a chronicle of the late twelfth-century English invasion of Ireland, the English leader more than once urges his knights to sally forth Ôin the name of the Almighty FatherÕ. The poet himself tells us that as the knights rush into battle from a coastal fort they are sent by Ôthe good JesusÕ. Miles de Cogan calls upon them in another Þght (in words that could be borrowed from the Song of Roland) to ÔStrike, in the name of the Cross! / Strike, barons nor delay at all, / In the name of Jesus the son of Mary!Õ His countryman Raymond le Gros often invoked St David in his very martial speeches.33

This language can be heard century after century. Froissart says the English launched their crossing of the Somme, in the campaign leading to the Þeld at CrŽcy (1346), invoking Ôthe name of God and St George.Õ34 The Black Prince,

32See VinaverÕs comments in Malory. Works, 758Ð60.

33Orpen, ed., tr., The Song of Dermot, ll. 1443, 1471, 1883Ð4, 1924Ð6, 1937Ð40. When a cowled monk kills an Irish lord with an arrow, the man is much praised: see ll. 2005Ð10.

34Brereton, tr., Froissart, 60.

before his great battle at Najera (1367), uttered an equally revealing prayer, with clasped hands raised to heaven:

True, sovereign Father, who hast made and created us, as truly as Thou dost know that I am not come here save for the maintenance of right, and for prowess and nobility which urge and incite me to gain a life of honour, I beseech Thee that Thou wilt this day guard me and my men.35

God, the author of prowess and honour, is expected to understand.

The strong element of lay independence in chivalry appears most blatantly in blistering anticlericalism. Sometimes the imagined attacks even go beyond the verbal to become directly physical.36 In The Coronation of Louis, for example, a cleric tells William that some of his fellow clerics are involved in a plot against the young king Louis. This loyal informer suggests that William behead them, despite their order, and for his part offers to take upon himself the sin of desecrating the Church in this way. ÔBlessed be the hour that such a cleric was nurturedÕ, William replies in wonder and gratitude, though he Þnally decides on a lesser sacrilege: he will simply beat the tonsured traitors and toss them out of the building, commending them to eighty devils.37

If the abuse directed at clerics in chivalric literature is more often verbal, it is no less informative. Denunciation of priests as greedy and lecherous is standard practice, but the interesting broader goal in chivalric literature is to demonstrate the equality or even superiority of the loyal and necessary knightly function in society. ChrŽtien has Gawain say:

. . . a man can give good advice to another who cannot heed advice himself,

just like those preachers who are sinful lechers,

but who teach and preach the good

that they have no intention of practicing themselves!38

Rainouart in Aliscans tells William, who has just forcibly conquered countless pagans, that he converts so well he should be a cleric; the knife slips in soon, however, for he then describes their soft and dissolute life in terms that bring general laughter.39 The biography of William Marshal refers pointedly to those standard Þgures of anticlerical satire, Saints AlÞnus and Rubinus (i.e. Blessed Silver and Gold), and says that they are much honoured at the papal court.40

35Pope and Lodge, eds., The Black Prince, ll 3172Ð83.

36Noble provides a highly useful sampling of anti-clerical sentiments in a number of chansons: ÔAnti-ClericalismÕ, 150Ð8.

37Hoggan, tr., ÔCrowning of LouisÕ, 35Ð7; Langlois, ed., Couronnement de Louis, 53Ð6.

38Kibler, ed., tr., Yvain, ll. 2537Ð43.

39Ferrante, ed., tr., Guillaume dÕOrange, 274; Wienbeck et al., eds. Aliscans, 505.

The author of the Song of Roland, after gazing in wondering admiration at the feats of the knight/archbishop Turpin on the battleÞeld, asks, rhetorically, ÔWhere is the priest who drove his body to do such mighty deeds?Õ41 The question would appeal to Geoffroi de Charny, who would make the same point in only slightly altered form several centuries later. Comparing the ease of a priestly career with the rigours of the knightly life, Charny notes that the clerics Ôare spared the physical danger and the strenuous efforts of going out onto the Þeld of battle to take up arms, and are also spared the threat of deathÕ.42 The author of Roland was even more explicit in his answer, however, and he presents Archbishop Turpin himself to state the case. Asking what a knight is worth who is not strong and Þerce in battle, he answers his own question unambiguously, Ônot . . . four pennies . . . / Instead he should be in one of those monasteries / Praying all the time for our sins.Õ43

At one point William of Orange similarly and pointedly reminds King Louis that the French thought he was of little worth and wanted to make him a cleric.44 In another text in the same cycle William tells Louis, who has failed to take up his fatherÕs offer of the crown with vigor, that he might as well be a monk.45 On the arrival of EnideÕs father for her wedding to Erec, ChrŽtien assures his audience that the brideÕs father Ôdid not have a troop of chaplains / or of silly or gaping folk, / but of good knights.Õ46 Never trust a priest except at confession time, says the author of the Chanson dÕAspremont.47 The statement has the ring of a popular maxim.

Chivalric Mythology

Yet the religious strength of chivalry is best seen in the steady conÞdence expressed in the inherent value of the knightly life rather than in the cut and thrust of anticlericalism. In its sacred mythology chivalry is older than the clerical hierarchy, having emerged in the age and circle of Christ. The element of independence is obvious, as is the associative piety and valorization drawn

40Meyer, ed., Histoire, ll. 11354 ff.

41Brault, ed., tr., Chanson de Roland ll. 1606Ð7. Similar comparisons of the chivalric and monastic life appear in Moniage du Guillaume, quoted and discussed in Subrenat, ÔMoines mesquinsÕ.

42Kaeuper and Kennedy, Book of Chivalry, 166Ð7.

43Brault, Chanson de Roland, ll. 1876Ð82. For similarly anti-clerical remarks from Turpin, see Newth, ed., tr., Song of Aspremont, 9Ð10, and Brandin, ed., Chanson dÕAspremont, laisse 15.

44Price, tr., The Waggon-Train, 64; McMillan, ed., Charroi de N”mes, 66. The French text says they wanted to make him Ôclers ou abŽ ou prestresÕ.

45Hoggan, tr., ÔCrowning of LouisÕ, 3; Langlois, ed., Couronnement de Louis, 4.

46Carroll, ed., tr., Erec, l. 6530.

47Newth, Song of Aspremont and Brandin, Chanson dÕAspremont, laisse 87.

from links with priestly mythologyÑcorrelations and allusions, similarities in typologies.48

These links appear vividly in stories about Perceval, Galahad, and the Grail. The blood lines of Perceval and Galahad go back to that great knight Joseph of Arimathea, who cared for the entombment of that most precious relic in the world, the body of Christ, and who cared as well for that most famous sacerdotal object, the Holy Grail. In fact, in the loose and allusive way in which these romances so often suggest parallels with sacred mythology, Perceval and Galahad recall the functions of Christ himself, or at least those of his functions which would appeal most readily to knights. They spread true faith and conquer the forces of evil.

These are knights for whom God performs miracles. Towards the end of the Quest Galahad brings healing to a man lame for ten years.49 Even LancelotÕs blood performs, if not quite a miracle, a marvellous cure when it restores Agravain in the Lancelot do Lac.50 In MaloryÕs Mort Darthur Lancelot heals the grievously wounded Sir UrrŽ by a laying-on of hands.51

Earlier, rough-hewn examples stand behind these Christ-like scenes. The retired William of Orange has learned from his abbot that he must not Þght with weapons, but only with ßesh and blood. Confronted by robbers in a forest, he rips a leg off a packhorse and uses it as a club. Feeling pity for the packhorse after the fact, he replaces the leg and prays; the horse becomes whole again.52

An atmosphere of at least pious power thus hangs over these knights. The result is reverence. In the Lancelot, at a time when Lancelot is thought to have perished, his battered shield is kept in the centre of a courtyard, with crowds of ladies, maidens, and knights dancing round it; Ôand every time the knights or ladies came to face it, they would bow before it as before a holy relicÕ.53 Again, in the Mort Artu, LancelotÕs shield becomes an object of veneration. Sent to the cathedral in Camelot before he leaves Logres, it soon hangs by a silver chain in the middle of the church where it is Ôhonoured as if it had been a holy relicÕ by the populace which ßocks to see it. The value of this evidence

48Ecclesiastics must have felt deep ambiguity about the independent directions knightly piety could take, an uneasiness similar to the reception clerics gave mysticism, which also claimed authentic religious inspiration irritatingly free from direct clerical control. Burns comments on clerical opposition to stories about Lancelot and the Grail in Lacy, ed., Lancelot-Grail, I, xxx.

49Matarasso, tr., Quest, 281; Pauphilet, ed., Queste, 275Ð6.

50Corley, tr., Lancelot of the Lake, 370; Elspeth Kennedy, ed., Lancelot do Lac, I, 539.

51Vinaver, ed., Malory. Works, 663Ð71.

52Ferrante, ed., tr., Guillaume dÕOrange and Cloetta, ed., Deux Redactions, laisse 25.

53Rosenberg, tr., Lancelot Part III, 326; Sommer, ed., Vulgate Version, IV, 144. Characteristically, a quarrel over its possession leads to a Þght, which brings to mind the Þghts that broke out over the possession of relics.

increases when we realize that some battered shields and banners from the very real world hung in churches in memory of knights who carried them.54

The knights themselves can receive such veneration. After Galescalin has freed the castle of Pintadol, in the Lancelot, he is greeted Ôwith the greatest possible joyÕ by a thankful crowd. ÔAnd as he passed in front of them, they all fell to their knees as if before an altar.Õ55 Those freed by LancelotÕs splendid success at Escalon the Dark, in the same romance, welcome him Ôas joyously as they would have hailed God himselfÕ.56

The same could be said of the Grail, which (whatever ChrŽtien de Troyes intended), later writers identify with the platter that served ChristÕs Passover lamb, the vessel for the wine, or the vessel that received his blood; they likewise identify the bleeding lance with the lance of Longinus which pierced ChristÕs side as he hung on the cross. In other words, the objective of this imagined knightly questing is nothing less than attainment of Eucharistic or mystical union with the divine; the knights strive to come to the LordÕs table, there to feed on the bread of heaven dispensed by Christ himself.

This quest and union are effected by the knights and their God, with only minimal sacramental mediation by priests. As we will see shortly, hermits stand like signposts on the way, pointing questing knights in the right directions, spiritually as well as spacially. But in the Þnal moments a few elect knights who have earned the apotheosis meet God and commune with him in a blaze of light.

We have been prepared for this moment by the unmistakable lay Pentecosts and Grail appearances in The History of the Holy Grail and especially in The Quest of the Holy Grail.57 In the latter text, at dinner on the feast of Pentecost, ÔAfter they had eaten the Þrst course, an extraordinary event took place; all the doors and windows of the palace closed by themselves, without anyone touching them. However, the room was not darkened.Õ A venerable man in white appears, leading into the company of veteran knights a young knight dressed in red and white, the colours of Christ. ÔPeace be with youÕ, is his greeting. The

54Cable, tr., Death of King Arthur, 152Ð3; Frappier, ed., La Mort, 162. Joinville hung his crusading uncleÕs shield in his chapel, with a tablet of explanation: Shaw, tr., Joinville and Villehardouin, 18. Coss notes that ÔEnglish churches seem to have been literally festooned with armorial glass and depictions of donorsÕ: The Knight, 89. Ayton cites banners deposited in churches, in addition to representations in windows, altar cloths, and the like: Ayton and Price, eds., Medieval Military Revolution, 87. The practice is illustrated inversely in the Þve hundred pairs of gilded spurs Froissart says the Flemings hung in the church of Notre Dame of Courtrai, having taken them from dead French knights on the Þeld of battle outside that city in 1302: see Brereton, tr., Froissart, 251.

55Rosenberg, tr., Lancelot Part III, 294; Micha, ed., Lancelot, I, 227. Holdsworth cites a case from life: ÔIdeas and RealityÕ, 76.

56Rosenberg, Lancelot Part III, 303; Micha, Lancelot, I, 265.

57Chase, tr., History of the Holy Grail, 23; Hucher, ed., Saint Graal, II, 168Ð72.

Josephus places this consecrated host in the Grail, kisses Galahad, and vanishes. Christ himself emerges from the Grail to give each knight present Ôhis SaviourÕ.

Lay independence hovers about this wondrous scene. If a quasi-priest ofÞciates here, he is surely an unusual specimen. He has, for one thing, been dead for three centuries, as the marvelling knights recognize when he descends from heaven. Moreover an inscription on his brow informs the knights that he was Ôconsecrated by our Lord in Sarras, in the spiritual palaceÕ. Josephus is decidedly not one of the clerics recognized by the priestly tradition in which the authority of God came to Peter and subsequently, by the laying on of hands, to each bishop and priest across the centuries. Even if he descends clothed in bishops robes, holding a crozier, wearing a mitre, Josephus is a Þgure created by knightly lay piety to begin a ritual which ends with the appearance of Christ to feed his best knights with his own body from his own hands.61

The Quest of the Holy Grail is far from a simple valorization of knighthood, whatever the striking parallels with sacred myth it creates for chivalry. Yet the degree to which such a work praised an idealized knighthood is fascinating and informative. Powerful ideas crackled like high voltage alternating current along lines connecting chevalerie and clergie. If, as we will see, the pattern proposed for knighthood in a text like this soared beyond actual knights, the sacralization of their idealized work, replete with concessions to their sense of independence, remains important.62

Knights and Hermits

The spectacular Grail scene at Corbenic is a culminating experience, the apotheosis of an imagined spiritual quest. Lay assertion of independence from clerical authority appears much more regularly in the prominence of hermits in all chivalric literature, particularly in the romances. Hermits are clearly the chivalric cleric of choice. In the forests which are the setting for adventure, hermits seem to have established their dwellings at convenient intervals of one dayÕs ride in order to accommodate knights errant who lodge with them regularly. They are Þgures of wisdom as well as keepers of plain hostelries for the

61For the consecration of Josephus, see Chase, tr., History of the Holy Grail, 25Ð8; Sommer, ed., Vulgate Version I, 30Ð6. Here, Josephus is termed Ôsovereign bishopÕ over his sheep, is dressed in all the Ôthings a bishop should haveÕ, is attended by angels, and is anointed and consecrated by God Ôin the way a bishop should beÕ. He wears a mitre, holds a crozier, has a ring on his hand. He performs the Þrst mass. Later he ordains priests and bishops. Chase, ibid., 49; Sommer, ibid., 78.

62Clerical ideas of reform are discussed in Chapter 4, further discussion of the The Quest appears in Chapter 12.