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

chivalrous; a knight can Þnd an explanation for his recent adventures or his troublesome dreams and a sure guide for his future conduct, as well as a bed, and at least barley bread and water.

Hermits are ubiquitous in chivalric literature. A hermit starts Yvain on his road to recovery after madness in ChrŽtienÕs Yvain;63 another speaks the key advice to Perceval on Good Friday in his Perceval.64 Scores of hermits nourish and direct the knights throughout The Quest of the Holy Grail. In fact, hermits will play a key religious role in romance for the next several centuries.65 And not only in romance. The spoken advice that becomes LlullÕs important manual on chivalry, we must remember, likewise comes from an old hermit who is instructing a candidate for knighthood. The chronicler Orderic Vitalis pictures a hermit foreseeing the future at the request of Queen Matilda, consort of William the Conqueror. His elaborate vision could come from the pages of The Quest.66

To realize why this knightly preference for hermits is signiÞcant to the lay piety of chivalry we need to understand the kind of Þgure hermits represent. Two key facts seem to stand at the heart of an answer. First, both as we Þnd them in medieval society and as they were represented in chivalric literature, hermits were closely integrated with the world around them; they were part of lay society. In England hermits were sometimes expected to take on such mundane functions as hospitality, chapel tending, work on roads and bridges, as well as the spiritual counselling and advice to laypeople we might expect.67 In literature they appear as especially attuned and sympathetic to knighthood, and often have come from the same social milieu as knights, indeed have often been knights themselves until age and waning capacity closed a chivalric career.

A second characteristic is of equal importance. Hermits were, in Angus KennedyÕs words, Ônot opposed to but rather on the outskirts of the ecclesiastical hierarchy properÕ.68 The combination is perfect for making them ideal purveyors of religion to the practitioners of chivalry. With thoughts of lay independence and suspicions of clerical aggrandizement in their heads, knights could readily appreciate the somewhat marginal position of pious hermits within the ranks of the clergy.69

63Kibler, ed., tr., Yvain, ll. 2831Ð90.

64Bryant, tr., Perceval, 67Ð70; Roach, ed., Perceval, ll. 6217Ð517. The didactic role plays on unabated through the continuations to this latter romance.

65Angus Kennedy provides an especially helpful overview: ÔThe HermitÕs RoleÕ. Cf. Frappier, ÔLe GraalÕ.

66Chibnall ed., tr., Ecclesiastical History, III, 104Ð9.

67Ann Warren, ÔSelf-Exclusion and Outsidership in Medieval Society: The English Medieval HermitÕ, paper read at the University of Rochester, 1991.

68Angus Kennedy, ÔThe HermitÕs RoleÕ, 83.

69If Henrietta Leyser is correct, the hermits in the world at the time chivalric romances were being written were already forming institutions and had moved some distance from the more solitary life pictured in these texts: see Hermits and the New Monasticism.

Benedictine monks and some clerics understandably took offence at the hermitsÕ claims and their criticisms of older monastic forms; they sometimes directed sarcastic attacks at what they considered anarchic, orderless, headless (i.e. leaderless) hermits.70 Their scorn and criticism, of course, make the same point as the knightly endorsement, from an opposing direction: these men are outsiders, not fully citizens of the world of clergie. Not all hermits were, in fact, priests, and even those who were priests seemed more engaged in the life of the laity and less entrenched in clergie than their fellows in monastery, parish church, or episcopal court. As Jean Becquet wrote, if Western eremiticism was clearly clerical, it was also lay, Þnding its recruits among laymen as well as monastics, and combining them in Ôa perfect symbiosisÕ. He notes that the master of one of the prominent eremitical orders in mid-twelfth-century France, the order of Grandmont, was Pierre Bernard, a former knight who had only recently become a priest.71 Some scholars are not sure that all hermits had even received the licence from the bishop theoretically necessary for entering the eremitical life.72

In fact, there is always a faint scent of the protest movement lingering about hermits. Jean Leclercq notes that in the eleventh and twelfth century they represented something of a movement or reaction, especially against contemporary monasticism; Angus Kennedy argues that by the fourteenth century hermits in literary works took on the role of critics of the Church of their day.73 In short, hermits combined a maximum of recognized piety and involvement in the life of the laity with a minimal possession or exercise of ecclesiastical authority; to this potent brew they added a dash of criticism of the church establishment.

Their undoubted piety was buttressed by the asceticism that always registered as authentic piety in medieval consciousness. This very asceticism showed the heroic character of the hermits, a quality which, of course, struck a responsive chord in knights; each group undertook its characteristic adventures and put the body in peril for a higher goal. Knightly recognition and approval of this asceticism appears regularly in chivalric literature. A hermit in the Perlesvaus, we learn, has not stepped outside his hermitage for forty years.74 LlullÕs hermit patently shows his holy life in his worn clothing, worn body,

70See the examples in Leclercq, ÔLe po•me de Payen BolotinÕ; this article discusses and prints a twelfth-century satire directed against hermits. See also Flori, LÕEssor de chevalerie, 262Ð3, citing Geroh of Reichersberg.

71Becquet, ÔLÕƒrŽmitismeÕ.

72G. G. Meersseman, commenting on BecquetÕs paper in LÕEremitismo in Occidente, 207; BecquetÕs agreement appears at ibid., 209.

73Ibid., 210, 594; Angus Kennedy, ÔThe HermitÕs RoleÕ, 76Ð82.

74Bryant, tr., Perlesvaus, 75; Nitze and Jenkins, eds, Perlesvaus, 112.

many tears. In the ÔÞrst ContinuationÕ of the Perceval, a hermit keeps a vow of silence through each night, visited by a helpful angel.75 Ascetic discipline wins for the hermits particularly clear and direct channels to God and his angels. Through this efÞcient access to divine power hermits can foretell the future, explain the past, heal the injured.76 The Mort Artu even explains GawainÕs mysterious increase of prowess at noon by the fact of his baptism by a holy hermit at that hour.77 In the Perlesvaus, Lancelot receives from a hermit the tempting offer to take upon himself LancelotÕs sin with the queen. The gesture is noble, but Lancelot declines, conÞdent that God will understand.78

Such powers are all the more attractive to knights when the hermits have actually known the chivalric life and come from the proper social class. The continuation of ChrŽtienÕs Perceval by Gerbert shows us a band of twelve hermits led by a hermit king, all former knights.79 Lancelot and Yvain stop at a hermitage in the Lancelot and Þnd Ôtwo good men, one who was a priest and another who had been a knight and was the uncle of the two knightsÕ guideÕ.80 The hermit who gives Lancelot useful information early in the Lancelot Ôwas very old and had been a knight, one of the handsomest in the world. He had turned to religion in his prime, when he had lost within one year all twelve of his sons.Õ81 A hermit in the Perlesvaus had been a knight in King UtherÕs household for forty years and then a hermit for another thirty years.82 Time and again romance authors show us hermits who have long been knights and who can thus speak to other knights on a level plane of social equality and shared vocation.83 A hermit whom Yvain meets (in the Lancelot) had been a knight errant even before Arthur was crowned: ÔAnd IÕd have been a member of the Round Table, but I refused to join because of a knight member for whom I bore a mortal hatred, and whose arms I later cut off. So after he was crowned, King Arthur disinherited me.Õ84

One hermit after another is presented as a former knight. In the Lancelot do Lac, to pick an example almost at random, we meet a hermit who had in his previous profession been one of the Þnest knights in the world.85 The hermits

75ÔÞrst ContinuationÕ in Bryant, Perceval, 152.

76Many examples in Angus Kennedy, ÔPortrayal of the Hermit-SaintÕ.

77Cable, tr., Death of King Arthur, 181; Frappier, ed., La Mort, 173. Cf. the highly effective prayers of PercevalÕs hermit uncle in Roach, ed., Didot Perceval, 180.

78Bryant, tr., Perlesvaus, 110Ð11; Nitze and Jenkins, eds, Perlesvaus, 168.

79Bryant, Perceval, 239Ð43; Williams and Oswald, eds, Gerbert de Montreuil, I, ll. 8906Ð10153.

80Rosenberg, tr., Lancelot Part III, 301; Sommer, ed., Vulgate Version, IV, 110.

81Rosenberg, Lancelot Part III, 86; Sommer, Vulgate Version, III, 163.

82Bryant, Perlesvaus, 41; Nitze and Jenkins, Perlesvaus, I, 60Ð1.

83Many examples in Angus Kennedy, ÔPortrayal of the Hermit-SaintÕ.

84Kibler, tr., Lancelot Part V, 174; Micha, ed., Lancelot, IV, 248.

85Corley, tr., Lancelot of the Lake, 139; Elspeth Kennedy, Lancelot do Lac, 209.

even on a crusade? Would any particular knight care about an some imagined hermitÕs advice, about Joseph of Arimathea, the shield of Lancelot, or the miracles of Galahad?

Knights need not have been primarily men of ideals to have ideals that mattered to them. If chivalric literature presents critiques and hopes for the reform of chivalry, it also reveals a good deal of the basic religious attitudes commonly held by knights. Their piety may have been thoroughly formal and from a modern, ideal perspective may look distressingly devoid of deep spirituality; but it need not have been less real for all that, nor less a guide to their conduct. These attitudes constitute a form of lay piety that was eminently practical. The knights wanted to be pious, orthodox Christians; they also insisted on a valorization of their profession of arms which would link them, Þnally, with divine order. Ideas that carried such weight mattered to them.

4

CLERGIE, CHEVALERIE, AND REFORM

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SHEER necessity as well as intellectual heritage gave the medieval Church a tradition of ideas which opposed some but not all violence. The very survival of Christian society was no mere abstraction for people with vivid memories of the break-up of the Carolingian order, if not of the break-up of the parent order of Rome. Continuing might of Islam, made so painfully evident in the Holy Land, brought their memories and fears quite up to date.1 Even within Christendom none could doubt that the evils inherent in an imperfect world would require the use of armed force in their solution, as they always

had.2

These ever-present problems were redoubled by the interlocking set of changes taking place so rapidly and to such signiÞcant effect in high medieval Europe. All three apexes of our triangle of power relationships, clergie, royautŽ, and chevalerie, were by the late eleventh and twelfth centuries coming into full vigour and were taking on sharper intellectual focus. The Church was confronted by the rise of knighthood, the emergence of a parent form of the Western European State, and new socio-economic, urban, demographic patterns in society (as noted in Chapter 1). Finding the right role for violence in general and for knighthood in particular thus gave churchmen sleepless nights.

The context within which clerical ideas on violence took shape may thus be as important as the ideas themselves, considered in the abstract. Despite the intellectual precedents available, the actual situation in the world of the late eleventh century seems dramatically new. The great heritage from the patristic and Carolingian past, even AugustineÕs ideas on just war, would have to Þnd

1 Pagans of some sort frequently appear as the threat in chansons and even in works more traditionally classed as romance.

2 The ultimate statement came from HonorŽ Bonet: Ô[I]t is no great marvel if in this world there arise wars and battles, since they existed Þrst in Heaven.Õ He has in mind the rebel angels who fought against God: see Coupland, ed., tr., Tree of Battles, 81. Bonet later notes (pp. 118Ð19) that the world can never be at peace, since conßict is built into heavenly bodies, animals, and humans, and argues that even if evil is done in war it is not in itself evil Ôbut is good and virtuousÕ (p. 125).

their proper Þt in this brave new world of papal power, crusade, and canon law. From this complex mix of theological ideas with the exigencies of sociopolitical change emerged a range of ideologies with high praise for an ideal knighthood at one end, bitter denunciation of the evils of knighthood at the other.

If over time more and more inßuential voices added their signiÞcant opinion at the positive end of the scale, clerical views on chivalry were always reform views, constantly mixing praise and denunciation to produce a society in which the Church could live, and an armed force with which the Church could work. With their bookish love of wordplay, the clerics perfectly captured the stark endpoints on the scale of their thought by using two terms of opposite tenor, differing in only one letter. Was chivalry, they liked to ask, the ideal service of GodÑmilitiaÑor was it simply badnessÑmalitia?

Clerical Praise for Knightly Militia

After the Gregorian Reform, led by a vigorous line of eleventh-century popes, had notionally drawn the world of clergie out of the somewhat smothering embrace of secular society, papal reformers found themselves confronted by issues of violence in all of their starkness. Could the leadership of the Church coerce enemies who opposed its realization of the will of God? Could the pope, only now achieving effective authority even within the Church, declare and direct war? Should churchmen personally bear arms in good causes? If they could not participate directly, how could ecclesiastical leadership guide the coercive power and violence of laymen?

Scholars generally hold that the Gregorians wrought signiÞcant changes in ecclesiastical views on such questions; many even consider the reformersÕ views, in particular those of Leo IX (1049Ð54) and Gregory VII (1073Ð85), truly revolutionary in their willingness to consider violence and warfare in a good cause not merely regrettable but even praiseworthy.3 Peter Damian and Cardinal Humbert, chief counsellors of Gregory VII, argued against the use of force even in defence of the faith or in the struggle with heretics.

Yet if both points of view continued to Þnd defenders, Gregory is commonly considered the principal single architect of subsequent medieval Christian ideas of holy war. If soldier-saints had been canonized in earlier

3 As Brundage notes: ÔThe really radical change in papal policy toward warfare . . . occurred during the reign of that most warlike of pontiffs, pope Gregory VII. . . . It has been argued, with considerable justice, that Gregory VII revolutionized the Christian view of warfare and that he was the principal inventor of the holy war idea in medieval ChristendomÕ: ÔHoly WarÕ, 104. Cf. Erdmann, Crusade; I. S. Robinson, ÔGregory VIIÕ; Cowdrey, ÔGenesis of the CrusadesÕ.

times, this was usually despite their military calling; signiÞcantly, Gregory considered some contemporary knights, such as Erlembald of Milan (ÔmartyredÕ in the very physical struggle against clergy who resisted papal reform measures), to be virtual saints because of their warring for right order in the world. His letters crackle with martial terminology: Ôthe warfare of ChristÕ, Ôthe service of St PeterÕ, Ôthe vassals of St PeterÕ. His enemiesÑSt PeterÕs enemies, GodÕs enemiesÑhave to be resisted, Ôeven to bloodÕ.4

At one point he chastised Abbot Hugh of Cluny for having dragged, or at least received, Duke Hugh of Burgundy into the peace of the Cluniac order; the abbot should rather, the pope wrote, have permitted the duke to remain in the world to carry out his much-needed service of another sort, the legitimate military function of a layman.5 At least brießy he tried to enlist the knighthood of Europe in a grandiose campaign to overawe the old Norman enemies of the papacy in Italy and then to march off triumphantly to Eastern lands. There they could aid the Christians in Constantinople against the unbelievers and, in the process, enforce Roman supremacy over the Eastern church.6

Even before his calls to arms in the famous struggle with the Emperor Henry IV, calls which a hostile archbishop characterized as declaring war against the whole world,7 Gregory VII found his enemies accusing him of unheard-of uses of force. The accusations could only increase during that struggle. The antipope Wibert of Ravenna, who pictured Gregory standing abashed at the Last Judgement asked, rhetorically, what defence he could give Ôwhen the blood of the many slaughtered cries out against him, ÒAvenge our blood, O Lord!Ó Õ Reporting the accusations circulating against Gregory, Wenrich of Trier wrote to the pope:

They declare that . . . you incite to bloodshed secular men seeking pardon for their sins; that murder, for whatever reason it is committed, is of small account; that the property of St Peter must be defended by force; and to whomsoever dies in this defence you promise freedom from all his sins, and you will render account for any man who does not fear to kill a Christian in ChristÕs name.8

One of these critics, Sigebert of Gembloux, presented the anti-Gregorian position with even greater succinctness in a sharp rhetorical thrust:

4 On military saints, see Cowdrey, ÔGenesis of the CrusadesÕ, 20. I. S. Robinson comments on GregoryÕs military imagery: ÔGregory VIIÕ, 177. Brooke notes that Ô Ò[b]loodÓ was a word often on his lipsÕ: Medieval Church and Society, 62.

5 Letter quoted in I. S. Robinson, ÔGregory VIIÕ, 190.

6 Cowdrey, ÔGregory VIIÕs Crusading PlansÕ, 27Ð40; I. S. Robinson, ÔGregory VIIÕ. 7 Quoted in I. S. Robinson, ÔGregory VIIÕ, 174.

8 Ibid., 180, 183. For a general discussion, with many citations, see Erdmann, Crusade, 229Ð68.

of God; such prowess exercised in just warfare became an instrument leading to the blessed goal of peace. If the warriors had the right motives, if the war was called by proper authority in order to right a wrong or injury, then all was well. Gratian was especially concerned about proper authority, but his list of such authorities, reßecting the situation in his world, seems to have been fairly comprehensive: it did not absolutely exclude anyone Ôfrom the Emperor or king down to the most lowly vassalÕ. Clerics were prohibited from direct participation by bearing arms themselves, and even from directly ordering bloodshed; but they could encourage others to defend right, correct wrongs, protect the Church. God was, of course, the ultimate authority for violence, but his Church could direct just war on his behalf.12

Canonists would work to Þll in these broad outlines (and to confront the myriad of questions Gratian left unanswered) for generations to come. For our purposes, the window of opportunity opened for a clerical valorization of knighthood is immediately obvious. The law of the Church, though with many qualiÞcations and caveats, accepted the need for knightly violence.

For all of its fears of the milites, the cloister, too, proved to be a source of ideas valorizing emerging chivalry. A much-discussed parallel between knights on the one hand and monks and hermits on the other provided one of the most venerable means by which blessings descended upon knighthood. Churchmen frequently asserted that knights and monks were both called to serve; signiÞcantly, the Latin verb they used, militare, could mean to Þght as well to serve and, in fact, they easily considered the service of both knights and monks a form of warfare against evil, in one dimension conducted in the spirit, in the other in physical battle.13 All the milites Christi, monks and knights alike, in other words, were warriors engaged one way or another in battle against evil, even as Christ himself had been.14

In a scene of wonderful symbolic content, white-robed monks in The Quest of the Holy Grail literally pull the knight errant Galahad into their religious house to enjoy their hospitality; on his part, he recognizes them, the author tells us, as brothers. In this same text the hermits who so prominently dispense religious advice regularly put on Ôthe armour of Holy ChurchÕ or Ôthe armour of Our LordÕ, when saying mass for the knights.15

12See the discussions in Russell, Just War, 55Ð85, and Chodorow, Christian Political Theory, 234Ð46. For GratianÕs text, see Richter, ed., Decretum Magistri Gratiani, I, 890Ð965.

13As noted by Holdsworth, ÔIdeas and RealityÕ, 77.

14This parallel is not conÞned to comparisons of monks and knights, though that is its usual form. Clerics other than monks might feel the basic similarity of roles, as John of Salisbury notes: Dickinson, ed., tr., StatesmanÕs Book, 190.

15E.g. Matarasso, tr., Quest, 53, 86, 103; Pauphilet, ed., Queste, 26Ð7, 62, 81Ð2.