Chivalry: The Everyday Life of the Medieval Knight

by Léon Gautier

Traces the life of a medieval knight from birth to death, revealing the code of chivalry which governed this military caste

Genres: History, Chivalry, Medieval History, Philosophy, France

512 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1884

Reviews

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

If one had to pick an institution in the Christian era that best represents the highest archetype of Western Christian manhood, virtue, religious piety, and fighting spirit, what would it be?

Chivalry!

French historian Leon Gautier wrote a masterful work on the history and characteristics of chivalry. It was originally published in France in 1884 at a time when Europe was experiencing a rebirth of interest and enthusiasm for the Middle Ages. His book is both history and apologia for chivalry. Based on copious research with primary sources, Gautier charmingly tells the story of chivalry while refuting many accusations and myths.

So whence came chivalry? Gautier explains:

"Chivalry is not one of those official institutions which make their appearance suddenly in history, promulgated by a Pope and decreed by a Sovereign.

Religious as it might have been, it had nothing in its origin that reminded one of the foundation of a religious order. One may in fact declare, that every single monastic order has been conceived in the mind of an individual. The grand Benedictine order arose out of the intelligence of Saint Benedict, and the Franciscan order from the heart of Saint Francis. There is no parallel to this in the case of chivalry, and it would be useless to search for the place of its birth or for the name of its founder. What a great archaeologist of our day has said of the Romance [Romanesque] Architecture is scientifically applicable to the birth of chivalry. It was born everywhere at once, and has been everywhere at the same time the natural effect of the same aspirations and the same needs. There was a moment when the Christians in the East experienced the necessity of sheltering themselves at prayers in churches built of stone which could not be burned; and then, to use the graceful terms of Raoul Glaber, the Christian soil everywhere covered with the white robes of new churches.

Hence the Romance architecture. There was another moment when people everywhere felt the necessity of tempering the ardor of old German blood, and of giving to their ill-regulated passions an ideal. Hence chivalry!

Although chivalry existed in various forms all over Europe during several centuries, its high water mark was in France in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The word chivalry conjures up a host of images for people today, mostly distortions or outright lies. Hollywood often portrays knights as greedy, ineffectual, hypocritical womanizers (such as "Kingdom of Heaven"). University students learn how knights were supposedly members of an oppressor class who killed or raped peasants on a whim.

On the contrary, chivalry had a high code of conduct that was strictly enforced by fellow knights. Its main tenets were summarized in the "Ten Commandments of Chivalry," which Gautier compiled from primary sources from the Middle Ages. Chivalry was essentially military valor put to the service of the Catholic Church, of the good, and of the right, and against evildoers and infidels.

To moderns steeped in political correctness, religious indifferentism, and selfish materialism, the Ten Commandments of Chivalry sound foreign and even sinister. But they were a totally natural and logical extension of fervent religious belief, and no one at the time would have objected to them in principle.

I. Thou shalt believe all that the Church teaches, and shalt observe all its directions.
II. Thou shalt defend the Church.
III. Thou shalt respect all weaknesses, and shalt constitute thyself the defender of them.
IV. Thou shalt love the country in which thou wast born.
V. Thou shalt not recoil before thine enemy.
VI. Thou shalt make war against the Infidel without cessation, and without mercy.
VII. Thou shalt perform scrupulously they feudal duties, if they be not contrary to the laws of God.
VIII. Thou shalt never lie, and shalt remain faithful to thy pledged word.
IX. Thou shalt be generous, and giver largesse to everyone.
X. Thou shalt be everywhere and always the champion of the Right and the Good against Injustice and Evil.

As nearly all noble families earned their nobility by the military feats of some ancestor, knights tended to be nobles. Gautier points out that most peasants and wealthy bourgeois admired but usually did not wish to become a knight. They usually preferred a quiet life of moneymaking than one of spilling their blood on the battlefield. But knighthood was open to any man of any social class who met the requirements and who performed feats of valor that made him worthy of joining the brotherhood. Although the Middle Ages were full of examples of men who lived up to this ideal, Gautier presents two who personify the archetypal knight: Godfrey of Bouillon, the leader of the First Crusade, and Roland, the nephew of Charlemagne.

Each chapter in the book covers a different stage in the lifetime of a typical knight: his infancy and childhood, the espousal and marriage, a day in the life of a knight, a typical military campaign, and the death of a knight. Each chapter is interspersed with charming stories from the lives of several different historical knights.

Gautier makes it clear that the institution of knighthood was an ideal. Not every knight lived up to this ideal, and there were abuses, even terrible ones. In such cases, his fellow knights would apprehend the apostate knight and put him through a ceremony of degradation in which he was stripped of his spurs, his sword broken, and the former knight publicly humiliated and punished for his crimes. In fact, the degradation ceremony for military officers that existed until the twentieth century was based on this same degradation of a knight. Although there were such cases of knights that went bad, most knights strived to live up to the ideal.

An important distinction made by Gautier was between the chanson de geste vs. the chanson d'amour. The chanson de geste (song of great deeds) was the original spirit of chivalry as described in its Ten Commandments: fighting for God, the Blessed Virgin, the Church, and against the infidel.

The chanson d'amour (song of courtly love) was a deviation of chivalry introduced by the Troubadours at the beginning of the Renaissance in the 13th century. The Troubadours composed songs in which they presented knighthood as a fight for the love of a woman, and often alluded to the sins of the flesh. It became a sentimental, emotional, and selfish caricature of chivalry, and did much to cool the fervor of militant Catholicism in late-medieval Europe. It was the beginning of the end of chivalry, which had mostly disappeared by the end of the fifteenth century.

When most people hear the word "chivalry" today, they think of the chanson d'amour. A knight fights to "earn" the romantic love of a beautiful woman, to impress a woman, or to rescue a woman in distress. Typical of this ideal are the paintings by Edmund Leighton (google him) in which the beautiful woman is always at the center of everything and the knight fights for her and only her. Chivalry became all about ego: showing off one's physical prowess and dominating others in a vainglorious way. True chivalry, the chanson de geste, does not exclude defending the defenseless (women, children, etc.), but its primary end is fighting for God and His Church on earth, not for the love of a woman.

So is chivalry dead? The institution may have died centuries ago, but the mark that chivalry made on the culture and mentality of the Western Christian world is deep and indelible. Until today, the knight is still the epitome of masculine prowess and virtue. To call someone a knight is one of the highest compliments one can give.

The sword is still the supreme symbol of warfare. Why do many Western militaries still use a sword as part of their dress uniforms? A sword, the weapon of the knight, represents the Western spirit of warfare like no rifle ever could.

A just cause is often referred to as a crusade. General Eisenhower called the Normandy landings "the great crusade." In a speech immediately after the September 11 attacks, U.S. President George W. Bush referred to the imminent fight against Islamic terrorism as "this crusade."

ISIS and Al-Qaeda routinely refer to Westerners and especially Americans as "crusaders." The day of the September 11 attacks was deliberately chosen because September 11 is the anniversary of at least three decisive victories of Christian armies over Muslims: the Siege of Malta (1565), the Battle of Vienna (1683), and the Battle of Zenta (1697).

Western Leftists heap scorn and hatred on knights and the crusades, even though the last crusade happened centuries ago. In 2015, Barack Obama's speech at the National Prayer Breakfast attacked Christians who associate terrorism with Islam. "Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ."

Chivalry is not entirely dead, but rather lying dormant, waiting for a general conversion back to the medieval Faith of our ancestors for it to resurrect once again. Deus vult!

[C.E. Case · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don’t think being written in 1891 can excuse this racist, homophobic, terrible book. First of all, it is written as a sermon. Holding up the Christian knight against feudalism, King Arthur (oh he haaaates King Arthur for “feminizing” knights), and Don Quixote. He says his research is based exclusively on epic poems from the 11th and 12th centuries because they are “not embellished.” WTF. He does factually point out that knights are robbers and pillagers, but blames “society” rather than, uh, God. I did not finish this book, but I’m counting it anyways because I was subjected to it for hours. Oh, and don’t get him started on how much he hates the French Revolution! He would like to talk to you about his German friends.