By Richard W. Kaeuper
The medieval code of chivalry demanded that warrior elites exhibit fierce braveness in conflict, demonstrate prowess with weaponry, and avenge any strike opposed to their honor. They have been additionally required to be religious Christians. How, then, might knights pledge fealty to the Prince of Peace, who enjoined the trustworthy to show the opposite cheek instead of search vengeance and who taught that the meek, instead of wonderful combatants in tournaments, shall inherit the earth? by way of what common sense and language used to be knighthood valorized?
In Holy Warriors, Richard Kaeuper argues that whereas a few clerics sanctified violence in security of the Holy Church, others have been sorely bothered by means of chivalric practices in daily life. As elite laity, knights had theological rules in their personal. Soundly pious but self sufficient, knights proclaimed the validity in their bloody career via selectively appropriating non secular beliefs. Their ideology emphasised meritorious agony on crusade and in conflict whilst their violence enriched them and validated their dominance. In a global of divinely ordained social orders, theirs used to be blessed, notwithstanding many delicate souls frightened concerning the final expense of rapine and destruction.
Kaeuper examines how those paradoxical chivalric beliefs have been unfold in an unlimited corpus of literature from exempla and chansons de geste to romance. via those works, either clerics and lay army elites claimed God's blessing for knighthood whereas keeping off the contradictions inherent of their fusion of chivalry with a faith that seemed again to the Sermon at the Mount for its moral origin.
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Extra resources for Holy Warriors: The Religious Ideology of Chivalry
Sample text
What if it involved despoiling the poor and churches—and what if the “defenseless” had fought back vigorously? Must a vassal follow his lord into a fight he thought illicit? How could one with certainty judge a licit war and the need for restitution? Were crossbows sinful weapons? Could Christians justly kill erring Christians? Some clerical solutions to such issues were so tortured in their reasoning that they could scarcely serve as practical guides, and must only have deepened any uncertainty lying heavily in the hearts of lay hearers or readers.
Religion is the ultimate valorizing force in the world—or at least it was in the old world, before virtual deification of the market. 71 There was much to bolster this sort of confidence among the medieval knighthood. Did not the clerics sing their praises regularly and Violent Knights, Holy Knights 21 see a divine mission for them? 72 With quite tolerable effort the knightly could block out much of the carping clerical criticism and listen contentedly to the glowing celebration of their necessary role in an ideal world.
The late twelfth-century Chanson d’Aspremont mentions in passing the story of Christ on the cross forgiving Longinus, the centurian whose spear thrust he received. 80 With similarly breath-taking inversion of forgiveness, the Anglo-Norman poem narrating the late twelfth-century invasion of Ireland at one point pictures the invaders charging their foes stirred by their leader’s cry, “Strike in the name of the cross! 83 Mingled ideas of righteous suffering and just vengeance echoed across medieval centuries and informed much thought about how to conduct a pious heroic life.
