Geoffroi de Charny, Livre de chevalerie
Author of a major vernacular text on chivalry and ranked among the most renowned knights of his age, his Livre de chevalerie (Book of Chivalry), written about 1350, upholds the glittering goal of fine chivalry no less eagerly than Marshal’s biography, and presents it as embodied no less clearly in and effected by martial deeds.
The leitmotif of Charny’s book is ‘he who does more is of greater worth’. Though he is at pains to emphasize that all feats of arms are honourable, he calibrates an ascending scale of knightly prowess: those who fight in individual jousts deserve great honour; those who fight in the more vigorous mêlée merit yet more praise; but those who engage in warfare win highest praise, since war combines joust and mêlée in the most demanding circumstances. It seems to Charny ‘that in the practice of arms in war it is possible to perform in one day all the three different kinds of military art, that is jousting, tourneying and waging war’. William Marshal would surely have loved this scale; he lived by it.
In Marshal’s case the all-important pursuit of honour through prowess even subordinated love as a major component in the knightly life. We saw in Chapter 10 that Charny finds romantic love a spur to prowess, stating, for example, that ‘men should love secretly, protect, serve and honour all those ladies and damsels who inspire knights, men-at-arms and squires to undertake worthy deeds which bring them honour and increase their renown’. These ‘activities of love and of arms’ overlap easily in his prose; they ‘should be engaged in with the true and pure gaiety of heart which brings the will to achieve honour’. Yet this acceptance and validation of love, joyful and worldly as it is, does not form the centre of Charny’s book. As one admired choice, rather than the sole path for the knight, it is not the single great goal for which prowess exists. Romantic love is wonderful because it promotes prowess and striving for honour; yet the prowess and the striving take first rank.
But Charny is willing to qualify his praise of prowess in the best reform manner. The finest laymen will combine the very best of three types not only of prowess, but of worth and intelligence as well. Worth may begin with a kind of innocence, and progress to pious formalities such as giving alms and attending mass, but its peak is loyally serving God and the Virgin. Likewise, intelligence involves only malicious cleverness at the lowest level, progresses to the ingenious but overly subtle, and appears at its best in the truly wise. Prowess is seen initially in those with courage and skill who are, however, thoughtless; it appears to better advantage in those who perform great deeds of arms personally, but do not act as leaders or advisers; and it is best found in those brave men who also command and direct other knights.
Charny’s omnipresent piety shows as he gives thumbnail sketches of great men from the past who have missed the highest status because they failed to recognize their debt to God. But he presents ‘the excellent knight’ Judas Maccabaeus from the Old Testament as the model. Those who want to reach such high honours, ‘which they must achieve by force of arms and by good works (par force d’armes et par bonnes euvres)’, should pattern themselves on him. Thus Charny’s book is much more explicitly a work of reform than Marshal’s biography. He knows that he must address real problems, however carefully he coats every suggestion for improvement with the gleaming whitewash of generous praise.
Reform is absolutely necessary, Charny knows, because the chief problem is of such central importance: he fears that French knights of his day have lost their vital commitment to prowess; and with this centre weakened the entire arch of chivalry threatens to fall about the heads of all.
At the time Charny wrote, the English and their allies had defeated French knights repeatedly, and were threatening further devastating incursions. When they most needed to risk all and bear all hardships, the knights of France, incredible as it seemed to Charny, appeared to prefer the soft life and the safe life, blind to the grand vision of an existence vested in vigorous deeds, come what may, a life of honour blessed by divine favour.
For a few pages of his book Charny puts aside the whitewash pot and brush altogether and speaks with curled lip of the timid, cowardly men who call themselves knights, but who really care only for bodily comforts and safety:
As soon as they leave their abode, if they see a stone jutting out of the wall a little further than the others, they will never dare to pass beneath it, for it would always seem to them that it would fall on their heads. If they come to a river which is a little big or too fast flowing, it always seems to them, so great is their fear of dying, that they will fall into it. If they cross a bridge which may seem a little too high or too low, they dismount and are still terrified lest the bridge collapse under them, so great is their fear of dying. . . .
If they are threatened by anyone, they fear greatly for their physical safety and dread the loss of the riches they have amassed in such a discreditable way. And if they see anyone with a wound, they dare not look at it because of their feeble spirit. . . . Furthermore, when these feeble wretches are on horseback, they do not dare to use their spurs lest their horses should start to gallop, so afraid are they lest their horses should stumble and they should fall to the ground with them. .
Now you can see that these wretched people who are so fainthearted will never feel secure from living in greater fear and dread of losing their lives than do those good men-at-arms who have exposed themselves to so many physical dangers and perilous adventures in order to achieve honour.
Later he denounces a second group, those unworthy of the great calling of bearing arms ‘because of their very dishonest and disordered behaviour under these arms’. If one set of men utterly lack the foundation of prowess, these men possess that great gift, but misuse it: ‘it is these men who want to wage war without good reason, who seize other people without prior warning and without any good cause and rob and steal from them, wound and kill them.’ He knows what to call such men: they are ‘cowards and traitors’. It does not matter if they maintain formal proprieties by abstaining from such behaviour themselves, only sending their men to do the dirty work.
Whether doers or consenters, such men, in Charny’s view, ‘are not worthy to live or to be in the company of men of worth’. They ‘have no regard for themselves’, and so, Charny asks rhetorically, ‘how could they hold others in regard?’ It seems he would agree with the assessment of V. G. Kiernan that ‘All military élites face opposite risks: some of their members cannot stop fighting, others—far more, probably—lapse too readily into sloth.’
If a failure or misuse of prowess is the chief issue for Charny, it comes as no surprise to find this critical problem redoubled by the absence of its essential companion, loyalty. As prowess withers or mutates, loyalty likewise declines; faction and treachery seem to flourish in their place. Any sentient observer could already have seen what so troubled Charny: ambition, regionalism, and anti-royal politics were already at work in mid-fourteenth century France; they ensured that the Hundred Years War would become a veritable civil war.
Charny’s book was apparently a part of a royal campaign for reform of governance in the interest of unity, a campaign in which chivalry in general and the king’s new royal chivalric order, the Company of the Star, in particular, were to play a role of obvious importance. In his book Charny dedicated three chapters specifically to outlining the nature of true princely rule. Here were reform ideas modern historians might call ‘top down’: kings must act for the common profit through vigorous good governance.
Yet the crisis showed with painful clarity how much the chivalric ethos was needed. Charny thus offered a set of ideas we might characterize as ‘bottom up’, understanding that the flooring here rests under the knights and men-at-arms and is in effect a ceiling for the great mass of Frenchmen.
Charny’s solution is direct and uncomplicated: the code must simply be followed. The knightly—indeed, all men living by the honourable profession of arms—must do their duty manfully, even joyously, knowing the rewards awaiting them when they next walk into a court to a murmur of praise, followed by the soft eyes of the ladies, as in time they will know the rewards awaiting them as they are welcomed into the court of heaven by the God of battles.
The answer seems so obvious to him: practice prowess, show loyalty. This is what God wants; this is what God will reward. Charny seems almost to exhaust even his immense energy, telling the essentials to his audience time and again, in the hope that even the obvious slackers of his own generation will finally see the plain truth.
In a time of crisis, as disaster threatened the very kingdom of France, Jean II and his great knight saw eye to eye on reform of the chief military force in the realm. But we, for our part, need to see that if chevalerie and royauté travelled the same path here (as they often could and did), the reform suggested by Charny is, in fact, much more elementary, much slighter than the ideas for reform which royauté generally thrust at chivalry.
Charny’s plan is something different, the standard knightly view, understandably recommending itself powerfully at this moment to the French king. In mid-fourteenth century France a clarion call for an augmented display of prowess and loyalty, buttressed by the certitude of divine favour, could sound like a fine reform programme to a monarch facing a military and political crisis.
Charny closes his great effort with (to borrow Maurice Keen’s characterization once again) a combination prayer and war cry: ‘Pray to God for him who is the author of this book . . . Charni, Charny.’ The statement recalls Marshal’s war cry, which likewise sounded his own name and called confidently upon God’s aid.
Charny’s piety is more explicit and certainly more voluble. Yet the basic assumptions are similar. Knights who do their hard duty with loyalty and honesty can be assured of divine favour. God will receive them into an eternity of blissful reward. There can be no question whether or not a man can save his soul by the profession of arms; there can be no danger to the soul in fighting for the right causes—in just wars, to protect one’s kin and their estates, to protect helpless maidens, widows, and orphans, to protect one’s own land and inheritance, to defend Holy Church. The list is generous, and accepts no cavils or criticisms. The divine blessing on reformed chivalry is clear.
Even Charny’s statement of clerical superiority has a somewhat formal ring; he soon betrays his sense that the great role that chivalry must play in the world gives it a special status. Like William Marshal a century before, he is happiest when religion comes heavily blended with chivalry; again in company with the Marshal, he most heartily endorses clerics who perform all the needed rites and then stand aside for the magnificent work with sword and lance.
