Author Topic: Chivalric Self-Criticism and Reform, Pt 3  (Read 1739 times)

Longmane

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Chivalric Self-Criticism and Reform, Pt 3
« Topic Start: January 17, 2012, 10:43:17 PM »
Useful as Llull’s Book of the Order of Chivalry and his other works are, we can draw on texts by other authors that seem even closer to the world of knighthood, less altered by a clerical programme.  Two works—both written in effect by practising knights—can best show us the impulse for reform among the knights themselves. They can remind us of the great investment in an enduring ideal in whose service such reform was to work.  We will turn first to the biography of William Marshal, the greatest knight of the late twelfth century, then to another of the vernacular manuals, the Book of Chivalry written by Geoffroi de Charny, one of the greatest knights of the mid-fourteenth century.

As we will see, the chivalric ideal held by these knights maintains a programme of its own. The changing settings in which the ideal was to work, however, required adjustments in the particular emphases of reform in order to fit basic ideals to new circumstances.


L’Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal

William Marshal died in 1219.  His biography was completed at least seven years later, after information had been carefully collected, by a man known to us only as John (Jean); the cost was underwritten by his oldest son.  This John, Georges Duby suggests, ‘might well be one of those heralds-of-arms who arranged the jousts on the tournament grounds, identified the protagonists by their insignia, and by singing their exploits boosted the reputation of the champions’. 

John tells us that his raw material came from his own knowledge and that of two others: the Marshal’s eldest son, and especially his companion John of Earley.  Some information may already have been set down in writing, some household documents may have been available; the rest came from living memory.  Georges Duby argues that from this evidence we hear William Marshal’s own memories, that we read, in essence, an autobiography.  David Crouch reminds us that this is the first biography of a layman below the rank of king.

This text shows the ideal of chivalry in its spring colours.  Yet it is a very pragmatic, quotidian notion of chivalry that we find in the Histoire, not something abstract.  Criticism or reform figures in this story only indirectly, by setting out an ideal working model for those who would follow the great exemplar, by embodying an ideal of chivalry in a life lived grandly and with success.  The rewards of this good life are implicit: all things are possible to the knight who will dare all—a great fief, royal patronage, a good lady, seemingly endless admiration.

The key quality is in no doubt: William’s life-story unfolds as a ceaseless hymn to prowess, the demi-god.  The reader learns that William never gave in to idleness but followed prowess all his life, and is admonished that ‘a long rest is a cause for shame in a young man (lonc sejor honist giemble homme)’, that men know that you must look among the horses’ legs for the brave (who, in their boldness, will sometimes be unhorsed).  Like a hero in a romance, William goes off seeking ‘pris et aventure’, especially in the tournament circuit available only on the continent. 

Page after page of the text details feats of enviable prowess done primarily in war—the war of raid and counter-raid, of siege and manoeuvre—and secondarily in the tourney.  William is given the honour of knighting King Henry’s eldest son even though he is landless and ‘has nothing but his chivalry’.  He becomes what the text calls the ‘lord and master’ of the young king; this position was appropriate, we learn, since he increased the lad’s prowess.

Loyalty is also praised by the Histoire as a defining quality of the Marshal, and thus of the ideal chivalric hero.  William appears time and again as the steady, reliable, and stalwart warrior, directing his great prowess in honourable and predictable causes.  That one of these causes was his own advancement and that of his family is accepted.  If ambition leads William (as it had led his father) away from loyalty sketched out in bold black and white, and into the grey, the text goes murky or silent.

Of course, because he is primarily an Anglo-Norman knight, baron, and earl, an account of his loyalty must also be a story of touchy relations with the lord king—of whom it could be said, as of a yet greater ruler, the lord giveth and the lord taketh away.

William managed to earn all his rewards with his sword and his loyal counsel, despite the complicated politics dominated by Henry II and his sons Richard and John.  If William’s masterful negotiations over fiefs on both sides of the Channel add a shaded note of realism, the Histoire completely obscures what Crouch terms John Marshal’s ‘quicksilver loyalties’ during the civil war of Stephen’s reign. 

Yet the message of the text is clear: William’s prowess and his careful and prudent loyalty, continually proved, earned him essential royal patronage.  In the last stage of his active life, blessed by the papal legate, William acted as no less than guardian of the young Henry III and of his realm (tutor regis et regni).

Through this young Henry’s wonderful largesse to valiant young knights, the poet assures his readers, chivalry will be revived.  Much admired by poets and writers who lived on its fruits, the quality of largesse, in fact, frequently appears among the signature qualities of chivalry displayed by the Marshal and the young king, son of King Henry.  Gentility, we read, was nourished in the household of largesse.  As his prowess and loyalty won him prize after prize on the tournament field, the battlefield, and the council chamber, William did the right thing and gave generously, openly, and with a sense of style.

William’s piety is likewise manifest, though it is sketched rather quickly and with broad brush strokes.  We see him knighted in a ceremony without ecclesiastical overtones.  He goes on pilgrimage to the shrine of the Three Kings of Cologne.  He goes on crusade, but we are left without the detail we would expect.  On his deathbed he is accepted into the Order of the Temple.  A note or two of anticlericalism surfaces: we hear of Saints Silver and Gold who are much honoured at the court of Rome.  But William has no doubts about the relationship between God and chivalry: on the tourney field and on the battlefield, his cry was ‘On! God help the Marshal (Ça! Dex aie al Maréchal).’  Piety and prowess merge in the same battlecry.

Even as the great Marshal waited out his final days, the deeply rooted sense of lay independence is apparent.  On his deathbed he confidently denied the validity of clerical criticisms of knightly practice—specifically of the profit from tourneying:

"Listen to me for a while.  The clerks are too hard on us.  They shave us too closely.  I have captured five hundred knights and have appropriated their arms, horses, and their entire equipment.  If for this reason the kingdom of God is closed to me, I can do nothing about it, for I cannot return my booty.  I can do no more for God than to give myself to him, repenting all my sins.  Unless the clergy desire my damnation, they must ask no more.  But their teaching is false—else no one could be saved".

With eternity stretching before him from the foot of his deathbed, the greatest knight of his age calmly brushed aside clerical strictures on the career that had given him so pleasing a combination of wealth and honour.  In this same conversation he likewise rejected the pious advice that he sell all the fine robes kept in his household and give alms to secure forgiveness for his sins.  First, he ordered, let each member of his household have his robes in the accustomed manner; then those left over could go to the poor.

Women usually appear only on the margins of this masculine story.  According to Georges Duby, ‘[t]he word love, throughout the entire chanson, never intervenes except between men.  ’ Rumours circulated, it is true, that William was the lover of Margaret, wife of the young king Henry, son of Henry II.  In a confrontation at court, William offered to fight any three accusers in turn, even to cut off a finger from his right hand—his sword hand—and fight any accuser with that handicap. 

Here in life—or at least in the written Histoire patronized by his heirs—the great knight plays Lancelot from the pages of romance.  The coincidence is hardly surprising.  This biography of the Marshal and the great prose romances spinning out the life of Lancelot may be separated by only a decade and a half.  Rival knights in this scene from life are as prudent as those who remained silent in the face of Lancelot’s challenges in the imagined courts of romance. Though William knows he must leave the court, since the prince’s love has vanished, he is soon recalled in order to get on with the real work of prowess, serving in his master’s team for the tournament.  The biography of the Marshal does not focus on women; the Marshal himself does not look like a devotee of ‘courtly love’.

On the whole this biography takes an optimistic tone with regard to chivalry.  There are no problems—at least no problems are openly recognized. The great example of chivalry simply must be followed.  Even John Marshal, William’s father, who at times played as ruthless and unprincipled a robber baron as ever wore armour, is praised by the author as ‘a worthy man, courteous and wise (preudome corteis e sage)’, who was ‘animated by prowess and loyalty.

The work is, of course, what moderns would call an authorized biography.  The appearance of the standard virtue words may, however, interest us as much as their sometimes problematic attribution to John or even William; showing prowess and courtesy, piety, largesse and loyalty are the ideals.  Great successes won by the key quality of prowess covers any gaps in the ideal framework, even if they are wide enough for a mounted knight to ride through.  The father did what he had to do; the son did all. Be advised.

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.  "Albert Einstein"