Knight's rules

[uppercase]

An interesting topic from 500 and more years ago.
A code to consider today ??
Anyone have any insight into the values and codes of the Knights ??

http://kogoldenhorn.com/Knights_Code.html

[couch]

This web page is from a fantasy or re-enactment site. It is a distinctly modern and anachronistic pastiche of ideas about knighthood (including women knights!).

This "code" blends concepts from two sources: chivalry (the profession of arms as an aristocratic vassal to a feudal lord, originating from the basic fact of the mounted warrior in Europe), and courtesy, deriving from the courtly love ideal (most influentially espoused by Eleanor of Aquitaine) that undergirds much troubador/trouvere poetry and the medieval romance tradition—not to say most subsequent ideas about romantic love and "chivalric" attitudes and behavior towards women. During the 19th century, a nostalgic revival of interest in things medieval resulted in the kind of highly idealized and romanticized version of chivalry most of us have inherited, and that is on view here. On the other hand, this web page also injects some decidedly contemporary attitudes about the rights of "citizenship" and the roles available to women.

A good book on the actual practice of chivalry was written by Nigel Saul in 2011 (reviewed here). As Saul and the reviewer point out, there were often internal contradictions in this practice. The basic point was the need of the Christian church to regulate the behavior of a martial elite that "came to view violence as its primary and hereditary profession."

The church (St. Thomas Aquinas and others) had to deal with the older ideals of honor and glory (that were so brutally celebrated for their own sake in the Iliad, for instance)—accepting the desire for honor as natural but seeking to control it by insisting on moderation, and insisting that honor should be the reward for virtue and service to the common good. Aquinas recognized that it can arise from pride and ambition, and Philippe de Mézières warned that vainglory, arrogance, presumption, and greed were threats to any lord occupying a seat of honor.

Sources for the moral aspects of such codes in the West (as different from other "ways of the warrior" like bushido in Japan) are various, and would include the Greek and Roman stoics (Marcus Aurelius) as well as Virgil's Aeneid and the Christian fathers; the etiquette we most associate with chivalry was really catalyzed in France in the time of Eleanor, reached a flowering at her court in Poitiers, and spread widely in the romance literature and books like Andreas Capellanus's The Art of Courtly Love (De Amore).

The literature in this general field is vast; one recent book that may focus more closely on your question is Chivalry and the Ideals of Knighthood in France during the Hundred Years War by Craig Taylor.

As for a modern code of conduct and comportment, a "Code of the Woosters," there are many elements to choose from, and I like some of the ones here more than others. Dorothy Sayers (herself a medieval scholar and translator) made a good start when she had her aristocratic sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey say that "a gentleman never insults anyone inadvertently."

[Luca]

Thanks Couch! An erudite and lucid review of the subject.
I suppose that if we want to put a positive gloss on the 'age of chivalry' as it developed in the Middle Ages we could say that it was the beginning, however circumscribed and faint, of the modernisation / Christianisation process that led to honour being primarily understood in terms of behaviour an honourable man would tolerate in others to being primarily understood in terms of behaviour than an honourable man would not countenance in himself.

[couch]

Thanks for the kind words, Luca. I think your point is very well taken, as well.

Spurred by watching a regietheater performance of Wagner's Parsifal some time ago, I started on a little project of reading and in some cases re-reading (in translation, I hasten to add) the main works in the "matter of Britain" through which the grail quest and the character of Parsifal evolved. Early on in that development, it's striking to compare Chretien with the author of La Queste del Sant Graal and the latter's need to create a more perfectly Christian character than Parsifal (Perceval), in the person of Galahad, to win the Grail quest in his version of the story.

The various incidents and adventures of Lancelot, Gawain, and Parsifal in Chretien sometimes show what we would call charity and courtesy--but just as often show haughtiness and a love of testing one's valor for the sheer joy of victory, without serious provocation and sometimes at the cost of the slaughter of unknown and innocent opponents (for example riding into tournaments as an unknown "ringer"). It seems true in the world of these tales that a man who takes up the knightly profession of arms knowingly risks such slaughter, and there are many tales in which the smallest slight (Lancelot is shunned and humiliated for deigning to ride in a cart—something that wasn't done) provokes bloody reprisal. Sometimes the slights seem to be deliberately sought, or given in ignorance of offense, as we would say "he has a chip on his shoulder." This is the realm of the "honor killing," the duel, and the blood feud, dressed in a thin coat of righteousness or self-righteousness.

So I heartily concur with your formulation, that the change from the inability not only to countenance base behavior in oneself, but the inability to countenance any slight from another without violent reprisal, to the ability to tolerate a blow to one's amour-propre with equanimity and use violence only as a last resort in defense of the "common good," begins to be worked out over the period of this literature, representing a step forward in civilization.

[uppercase]

Fascinating, couch!!! Thank you.

Are you a knight?

[DD MacDonald]

Rules for a Knight?

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultur ... or-knights

[DD MacDonald]

http://www.amazon.com/Rules-Knight-Etha ... 0307962334

[couch]

Thanks, DDM--I had missed that interview with Hawke. I think his book (and this thread) shows the continuing fascination of the idea of the holy warrior, the moral guardian, the wielder of might for right. There's Harry Potter, and Wyatt Earp, and every paladin and martial hero. The virtues required (many listed in the original web site uppercase linked to) are appealing. The challenge comes in knowing what "right" is, and in claiming the prerogative to kill for it. Current events show what can happen when that goes awry.

Hawke's book reminds me that a book with (for much of its length) a very similar project (coming-of-age-story about learning both strength and wisdom) and period setting is T.H. White's The Once and Future King, which formed the basis of the musical Camelot and Disney's film The Sword in the Stone. White was a quirky but wonderful writer, and it's too bad if this book has been neglected. ("Might does not make right. Right makes right!") I wonder whether Hawke consulted it.

Hawke himself certainly does the "unassuming" part well. I may have posted here before that my partner and I attended a performance of The Cherry Orchard at the Old Vic in 2009, in which Hawke and Simon Russell Beale played Trofimov and Lopakhin under Sam Mendes's direction (Tom Stoppard's translation). In the performance, Hawke plays a beat-up guitar. It was a terrific evening of theater, with Beale as so often out-doing himself. Clare and I were on the Jubilee line back to the flat, in a virtually empty car, standing up and deep in conversation about Lopakhin's various motivations. At about the second stop, we vaguely registered a scruffy fellow step into the car with two old guitar cases. After a few minutes, a voice pipes up at our elbow, saying "I always like to hear what people are saying about the show." And of course it was Hawke, joining the conversation.

I like to think that anecdote says something about both London (I can't imagine a star of his stature taking public transport in New York or LA) and about his own decisions about dealing with celebrity (and perhaps knighthood).

And thanks to you, UC, for the kind words as well. I can't claim to be a knight in anybody's book, though I do work to be a scholar and (in the non-hereditary sense) a gentleman.

[uppercase]

This is fabulous, couch. Thank you!

Indeed, a code of conduct, drawn from the past, is compelling, particularly today as anything goes .

I suspect that many LL members already follow a code, though perhaps unwritten , unselfconscious, and individual. But one which we would all recognize as "gentlemanly ".

Still, the historical precedents are fascinating and I personally would love to learn more.

[Luca]

An interesting tension or conflict of requirements, is the extent to which it is humanly or practically possible for the ‘traditional’, pre-modern chivalry to discard its penchant for martiality and self-regarding honour while still remaining effective in its role as paladin of the weak. If one believes in limitless perfectibility of humanity, it should be conceivable to be both extremely tolerant, gentle, humble and forgiving but also able to spring into fearsome action when required. In reality, I wonder if some vestige of the glory-seeking, violent warrior is not a prerequisite at least for those whose profession is to guard our safety.
As a parallel, I would also offer the evolution of the meaning of ‘gentleman’ from one centred around position, wealth, status and a certain courtliness to one centred around consideration, self-control, reliability and seriousness.

[hectorm]

As a parallel, I would also offer the evolution of the meaning of ‘gentleman’.

In Spanish when you address a gentleman (even if you don't know he´s one, and specially when you think you are) you say: caballero.
Exactly the same word you would use for ‘knight’.
No difference there.

[couch]

Mostly true, hectorm, though in direct address with a name (at least in the peninsula) it's usually "Don" or "Doña" (in Latin America that honorific is often given to the elderly). So you might say "!Bienvenido, caballero!" but also "!Bievenido, Don Jaime!" And the cognate term for "gentleman" does exist in Spanish (see below, though I don't have an Academy dictionary to hand for details).

Luca's point, I think, about the evolution of "gentleman" parallels the earlier discussion. If you look at the etymology (OED), the term passed into early Middle English from Old French (gentilz spelled as in Provençal):

Etymology: < gentle adj. and n. + man n.1, on the model of Old French gentilz hom (French gentilhomme) = Italian gentiluomo, Spanish gentilhombre.

The earliest usage recorded in the OED is from the Old English Miscellany of 1275, in one of the "Proverbs of Alfred":

Hic ne sige nout bi þan,
þat moni ne ben gentile man;
þuru þis lere and genteleri,
he amendit huge companie

(Roughly: I don't say that man may not be a gentleman; through this learning and gentle behavior, he improves a great company.)

And with specific reference to the appropriate qualities of behavior we were discussing, Chaucer in 1386 (Melibeus):

And certes he sholde nat be called a gentil man, that..ne dooth his diligence and bisynesse, to kepen his good name.

So the chronology of the entry of this sense of gentleman into English seems to accord with the spread of the influence of the French courtly and romance literature, combining the latinate "gentilz/gentile" with the Germanic "man/mon," though this is circumstantial (the French-speaking Norman aristocracy was influencing the language from the late 11th century on).

To Luca's point about the conflicting requirements for the "parfit gentil knicht," surely that's one of the things we as adults find entertaining and seductive in the Bond films: the hard man who, like Kent in Shakespeare's Lear, disobeys his orders in order to fulfill his loyal oath. At the same time, most of us would not make the same decisions, or kill with such abandon.

[rodes]

Thank you all for discoursing on this subject. This justly praised mode of living is highly needed and rarely found in modernity. I invite you to the Prologue of "The Canterbury Tales" for this ideal pattern in classic literature. Here is a "... very perfect, gentle Knight."

[YoungLawyer]

One interesting aspect to this, in England, is the eventual separation between 'court' and 'country'. The idea of a knight usually looks to a central authority, a fons honorum, from which status is derived and such status is clearly defined. A person is always invested with the regalia and status of knight, and requires that external act of creation to exist. From a slightly later period than you've discussed, Castiglione's ideas might be a source of gentlemanly conduct, but are aimed at ensuring the reader was someone fit to appear at court, and the idea of a central authority or at least a shared centre of activity is retained.

In English, the idea of a gentleman doesn't retain that connotation. A man could be considered a gentleman, but not knight, and never appear at court. In England, the use of the word gentleman was generally unregulated. There were attempts in the early 17th century, by actions akin to modern actions of slander, to say that 'gentleman' had an official meaning. The typical 'wrong' was a statement that a man was no gentleman, and that 'gentleman' brought an action in the Court of Chivalry/Court of the Earl Marshall. The 'defence' was a justification of the statement, and in these defences we get an idea of what the early modern understanding of a 'gentleman' was. These are often wonderfully hilarious to our understanding, for example that a man farmed 'pigges', or that he did not own his own horse, or kept the wrong sort of hound, or such like. The records were recently republished by the University of Birmingham (http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/his ... ndex.aspx/) and make interesting reading. More modern attempts to define neatly a gentleman are, I suggest, doomed to failure, as there is no single source, or definition. The editors of Burke's Landed Gentry from the late 19th century, had a strong idea, but not one that is applicable to contemporary Britain. For more on this, Squibb, 'the High Court of Chivalry' and 'The Law of Arms in England' deal with the idea of whether an armiger is a gentleman and what meaning this retains comprehensively.

[couch]

Thank you, YL, great stuff!

Even in the early period I was considering, your point about the external fons honorum obtains. In the Arthurian romances of the 12th century, when nation-states were not yet consolidated, it seems that prospective knights could choose the noble whose service they wanted to enter: several aspirants come from far countries to be knighted by Arthur. But in a sense that is the nature of feudal service: a personal bond. It's the king (or duke, or margrave, etc.) whose honor and magnanimity convey both the honor and obligation of knighthood. At this period most dynasties had been short-lived, and both real and fictional monarchs were likely to have won their territory through warfare, or be only one or two generations removed from those who did, so the whole chivalric enterprise must have seemed as much a martial sodality as an institutional structure.

On an unrelated note, in checking up a fact on Perceval/Parsival's attempts to be knighted by Arthur, I ran across this site in search engine results, which may interest the original poster of this thread. I have no connection with it.