I thought I'd follow my earlier post by adding something else from the same book.
CHIVALRIC SELF-CRITICISM AND REFORM
PREVIOUS chapters have shown knights absorbing ideas and cooperating with practices from the spheres of clergie and royauté, while filtering through their own high sense of power, privilege, and calling any ideas and practices that seemed constricting or intrusive. Yet reform was not simply forced upon knighthood from outside, by those who were not knights or not primarily knights. The knights themselves clearly had ideals. Even had clerics and royal career administrators ceased to direct a steady stream of exhortations, some of the chivalrous would have found a continual reform programme necessary and desirable.
Many knights knew that the great ideal could be better implemented in the world and, to the extent that it was, that the world would be a better, nobler place. The warriors themselves agreed that there was, in other words, ideal chivalry, that although they might have debated the details; they thought that difficult and imperfect men must try to do better. Clergie or royauté, of course, held that chivalry would still need reform even if it were practised according to the ideals sketched in this chapter.
We can best discover the ideals of the knights themselves in works written by them or by those quite close to them. The vernacular manuals or handbooks written to instruct knights provide a classic source. The Book of Chivalry by Geoffroi de Charny and The Book of the Order of Chivalry by Ramon Llull are especially important. But before considering these it will be helpful to glance at the programme in an earlier work.
The Romance of the Wings
The Romance of the Wings (Le Roman des Eles), written by Raoul de Hodenc in about 1210, shows a clear reforming intent from its opening page, even if this intent is wrapped, as always, in extravagant praise of chivalry as an ideal.
Raoul says that the very name chevalerie is full of ‘such loftiness and dignity’, that, ‘rightly speaking, [it] is the true name of nobility’. Only knights drink from the inexhaustible, divine fountain of courtesy: ‘it came from God and knights possess it’ (ll. 11–15, 25).
Because of its very loftiness, it stands so far above all other lofty names, that if they were to recognize its lofty nature, they would not dare to do some things they now do.—Why?—Out of shame. But they are not aware of the exigencies of their name, for a man may take himself for a knight though he know not what appertains to the name, save only ‘I am a knight’. (ll. 40–9)
He thinks it ‘indisputably true that they should be such as their name says’. Yet ‘many have no understanding of knighthood’. He is specifically worried that the dominance of prowess in the thinking of knights will drive out two other qualities that he wants to see held in great esteem: liberality and courtesy. He tries to be careful, but his enthusiasm carries him along:
Do I mean to say that there is such a thing as a wicked knight? By no means, but some are at the least worth more than the others, whatever the case; and there are many such who are so superior in prowess that they do not deign to exercise liberality, but rather trust so much to their prowess that pride strikes them at once.’ (ll. 27–8, 116–26)
He imaginatively recreates the thinking of such a man: ‘Why give? What can they say about me? Am I not he of the great shield? I am he who has conquered all, I am the best of my kind, I have surpassed Gavain in arms’ (ll. 128–34).
To such prideful knights, obsessed with prowess, Raoul responds:
Ah, lords, whatever anyone may say, it is no part of knighthood for a knight to despise liberality on account of his prowess, for to tell the truth, no-one can rise to lofty esteem by means of prowess unless that prowess has two wings; and I will tell you what the matter and manner of those two wings ought to be. (ll. 135–43)
The treatise does just that, providing detailed explanations of seven feathers on the right wing of liberality, seven on the left wing of courtesy.
Raoul fears that an excessive belief in prowess in his own time will reduce the largesse so important to chivalry; significantly, his great enemy is the miser, where Geoffroi de Charny’s is the cowardly and inactive man. From the right wing the knight learns that he must be courageous in liberality, give to rich and poor alike, spend without care for landed wealth (saying, ‘A knight, God protect me, will not rise to great heights if he enquires of the value of corn’), give what is promised, promptly and liberally, and provide fine feasts.
The left wing is also composed of seven feathers, each a specific component of courtesy. The knight must honour and guard Holy Church, avoid pride; refrain from boasting (he should ‘strike high and talk low’), enjoy good entertainment, avoid envy, avoid slander (since simultaneous physical and verbal feats are an impossibility), and be a lover and love truly for love’s sake (ll. 144–end).
As Keith Busby, the editor of the text, has suggested, the message is ‘largely social, and it concentrates on telling knights how to behave rather than elaborating on the symbolic significance of knighthood’. Though the poem makes its case in religious and moral terms, it ‘could not be called essentially religious’. So close is its link with topics we have discussed that we might safely call the poem reformist.
NB I'll add the rest involving the other books in some later posts.
