The Force of Ideas
Was the clerical ideology of reform absorbed by the knights themselves; in
other words, was this external ideology to any significant degree internalized
by knights, who (as we have already noted) displayed a high degree of independence
of thought? Academics inclined to believe in the force of ideas—
especially scholars who rely primarily on the evidence of idealizing texts—are
likely to utter statements of hope in approaching this difficult issue. The
medieval world knew much violence, to be sure, but at least clerical ideas set
the terms of the discourse and began to make a difference, to civilize the brutal
warriors, and help them make their world a better place. Along with John
of Salisbury, some scholars tend to link advancing civilization and restraint
with the admixture of classical and clerical ideas in chivalric culture.
Scholars who have spent years among court records and chronicles, on the
other hand, are less likely to think the knights stepped, transformed, out of the
soft hues of pre-Raphaelite paintings; the most hard-boiled are more likely to
argue that clerical efforts in fact—however unintentionally—pulled the
thinnest veil of decency over knightly behaviour that often went on largely as
before. In such a view, knights simply absorbed and laicized the clerical valorization
of all the violence they carried on with such enthusiasm, while filtering
out most of the criticism.
The difficulty, of course, lies not only in finding sufficient evidence but in
calibrating a standard for judging the effectiveness of reform ideas in the
world. How could we know in how many instances knights refrained from
burning a church or pillaging an opponent’s peasantry out of a fear and love of
God inculcated by clerical instruction on ideal chivalry?
Some evidence is suggestive. We might recall that Orderic Vitalis thought it
highly commendable and worthy of mention that Richer of Laigle hesitated to
attack peasants whom he had already plundered and who had prostrated themselves
before a roadside crucifix in terror. Such unusual restraint, praised so
highly (‘something that deserves to be remembered forever’) at least indirectly
suggests what was a common view of early twelfth-century Norman knights.69
A passage in the contemporary Crowning of Louis pointedly reminded its audience
that Jesus liked knights who spared churches from the torch, a theme that
69 Chibnall, ed., tr., Ecclesiastical History, VI, 250–1.
might have special meaning for John Marshal (father of the more famous
William), whose face had been disfigured by molten lead dripping from the
roof of an abbey church burned by one of his enemies during the twelfth-century
period of civil war in England.70
Major characters in chivalric literature occasionally speak out in a surprisingly
self-critical vein. In the prose romances of the early thirteenth century
Queen Guinevere, Lancelot, and Galehaut confess fascinating and revealing
doubts about the moral solidity of chivalric life as they live it. The queen, in
conversation with Lancelot, says that it is ‘too bad Our Lord pays no heed to
our courtly ways, and a person whom the world sees as good is wicked to
God’. A little earlier, Galehaut, learning from a dream that his death may be
close, decides to amend his life. He admits: ‘I have committed many wrongs
in my life, destroying cities, killing people, dispossessing and banishing
people.’71 This confession comes from a man continually praised as an exemplar
of all excellent chivalric qualities.
If such evidence is problematic and at best suggestive, other evidence is
indisputable. Wars without clerical sanction continued throughout the
Middle Ages and subjected ‘non-combatants’ to the entire scale of violence
available, especially to the indiscriminate force of fire.
It seems equally important that clerics themselves were not satisfied with the
reception and internalization of their ideas by knights; even crusaders suffered
bitter criticisms from disappointed ecclesiastical enthusiasts. Certainly, the
knights showed no great inclination to listen to clerical condemnations of their
characteristic sport of tournament. In a letter to Abbot Suger, St Bernard complained
in bitter tones:
The men who have returned from the Crusade have arranged to hold again those
accursed tournaments after Easter, and the lord Henry, son of the count, and the lord
Robert, brother of the king, have agreed regardless of all law to attack and slay each
other. Notice with what sort of dispositions they must have taken the road to Jerusalem
when they return in this frame of mind!72
Nor did knights accept clerical claims regarding the dubbing ceremony. To
control these ceremonies would obviously win the clerics an excellent opportunity
for inculcating their ideas of true chivalry at one of the more significant
moments in a knight’s life. An ecclesiastical strand is undeniably present in the
historical and literary accounts of dubbing ceremonies. Yet, as Maurice Keen
has argued convincingly, the Church, which managed to establish its role in
Clergie, Chevalerie, and Reform 85
70 Hoggan, tr., ‘Crowning of Louis’, 43; Langlois, ed., Couronnement de Louis, 64. The John
Marshal incident is discussed by Crouch, William Marshal, 13; John lost one of his eyes.
71 Rosenberg, tr., Lancelot Part III, 275, 254, Micha, ed., Lancelot, I, 152, 61.
72 Bruno Scott James, tr., Bernard of Clairvaux, letter 405.
the coronation ceremony, achieved much less success when it came to the dubbing
of knights.73 In fact, dubbing to knighthood looks very much like a classic
example of independent lay piety, an appropriation or laicizing of the
clerical entry into knightly practice; once again, knights more readily took on
religious legitimation than the element of sacerdotal control intended from
the sphere of clergie.
None of these estimates needs to be read judgementally, of course. If
medieval churchmen did not cut through the Gordian knot binding violence
and religion, neither have thoughtful people before or since—at least not to general
satisfaction. Nor must we take up the ecclesiastical scales of judgement on
knighthood in this matter. Knights surely did not passively absorb restraining
and improving clerical ideas and then fail deplorably to reach the high standards.
They had ideas of their own, as we have seen, even ideas along religious lines.
They considered themselves competent judges as to which clerical ideas about
chivalry they would accept and may not even have wished to accord their lives
with many others. Our task is not to award or withhold good behaviour points
for knights, but to recognize how selectively they absorbed clerical ideology.
Their particular form of lay piety probably gave knights the confidence that
God understood them and appreciated their hard service, even if further transactions
were necessary to secure formal approval via his touchy worldly representatives—
likely to be their brothers, sisters, and cousins who had entered the
clergy. Valorization of holy war, of course, spread easily at a time when any
war could, with minimal effort or sophistry, be considered holy.74 But the simpler
truth could be that knights needed very little valorization of their warfare
by clerics at all, though undoubtedly they would prefer to have it.
Their hard lives and their good service covered most of the tab for their
morally risky violence. If their hands were bloody, was it not because—as even
the clerics recognized—some blood had to be spilled in a world spoiled by sin?
Whether loyally smiting the king’s enemies or merely troubling their neighbours,
whether they fought before or after a crusade, they were doing what
they had to do in the confidence that they could settle any accounts with the
fussy clerics through donations or deathbed contrition, even deathbed conversion
to the religious life. ‘In crude terms’, Emma Mason writes, ‘they tried
to buy off the consequences of their aggression by offering a share of the loot
to those whose prayers would hopefully resolve their dilemma.’75 Christopher
Holdsworth makes a similar observation: ‘Standards were held up, but at the
73 See the discussion in Keen, Chivalry, 64–82. 74 See Russell, Just War.
75 Mason, ‘Timeo Barones’, 67. Mason continues, ‘Such a naive attitude cannot, however, be
contrasted with any superior spirituality of the cloister, for religious houses were all too ready to
cooperate in this cycle.’
last one lot of soldiers would take the others in, provided they received an adequate
payment.’76 This certainly was the view of the Anglo-Norman knight
Rodolf Pinellus, when his violent way of life was criticized by Abbot Herluin
of Westminster; only after he had had his fill of worldly pleasure and was tired
of fighting, he coolly told the abbot, would he give it up to become a monk.77
Likewise, Gerald of Wales tells us that the Anglo-Norman invaders of Ireland
were great men; but they had failed to give enough in payments to the Church
to offset their slaughters.78
William Marshal in the early thirteenth century and Geoffroi de Charny in
the mid-fourteenth century took what probably seems to us a less crude view,
but they both showed the same spirit of lay independence when the matter in
question was the knightly right to fight, to take pleasure in the display of
prowess and the winning of honour and profit. William’s flattering biography,
primarily a study of war and, secondarily, of the quasi-war of tournament,
shows no evident qualms about warfare; instead, one comment after another
reveals an easy assumption of the knightly right to violence in causes any
knight would consider right.79 His unceasing piety hardly keeps Charny, similarly,
from paeans of praise for prowess and assertions of the religious character
of the knightly life per se. Charny is especially sure that the sheer suffering
endured by knights in their demanding calling wins them favour with God.80
In fact, we must remember that ideological influence flowed both ways
between clergie and chevalerie, or at least that churchmen found it necessary and
sometimes even congenial to accept more of the self-estimate of the knightly
role than strict clerical ideology would suggest. In his sermon delivered at
William Marshal’s funeral, for example, the Archbishop of Canterbury waxed
eloquent about the ‘finest knight in the world’ in language not very different
from that used to praise the Marshal at the French royal court. The Templar
sent shortly before William’s death to receive him into the order had
announced unambiguously that, as the greatest knight in the world, possessed
of the most prowess, ‘sens’, and loyalty, Marshal could be sure that God would
receive him.81
Clergie, Chevalerie, and Reform 87
76 Holdsworth, ‘Ideas and Reality’, 78. See his further comment on pp. 76–7: ‘The work of a
knight, the work of Christ, the work of a monk, were all inextricably linked because they seemed
varieties of battle.’
77 Vita Herluini, in J. A. Robinson, Gilbert Crispin, 94–5.
78 Wright, ed., tr., Historical Works, 266. Orderic would undoubtedly not have appreciated this stark
formulation, yet in praising the benefactors of his own house he tells us that a former knight, Arnold
(now one of the monks), travelled as far as Apulia and Calabria ‘to ask for support for his church from
the loot acquired by his kinsmen in Italy’: Chibnall, ed., Ecclesiastical History, IV, bk. VIII, 142–3.
79 Gillingham, ‘War and Chivalry’. 80 Kaeuper and Kennedy, Book of Chivalry, 176–7.
81 Meyer, ed., Histoire, II, ll. 18387–406, 19072–165.
Such unqualified praise is easily understandable. Men who have acted
largely in the world brought great honour and legitimacy to a way of life with
which they were closely identified, or which, as in William’s case, they personified.
The need for knighthood was undeniable; churchmen knew that
knighthood could be the armed force of God. When that force acted heroically
on the battlefield (even if not in strict accord with clerical standards) or when
it acted beneficently in a court, giving gifts to religious foundations, the concept
of an ordo of knighthood was available as a vehicle for thought. It was
likely to loom much larger in both lay and clerical minds than the formal
qualifications and particular strictures attached to the idea.