“O Durendel how art thou fair and holy! In thy hilt what store of relics: tooth of St. Peter, blood of St. Basil, hairs of my lord St. Denis, cloth worn by the Holy Mary.”[664] These relics made the “holiness” of that sword, not in the way of sentiment, but through their magic power. And we shall not be thinking in mediaeval categories if we lose sight of the magic-religious effect of the priest’s blessing on the novice’s sword: it is a protection for the future knight.

Doubtless the religious features of the “adoubement” revert to various epochs. The ancient watch-nights preceding Easter and Pentecost, followed at daybreak by the baptism of white-robed catechumens, may have been the original of the novice’s night vigil over his arms laid by the altar. His bath had become a symbol of purification from sin. He heard Mass in the early morning, and then came the blessing of the sword, the benedictio ensis, of which the oldest extant formula is found in a Roman manuscript of the early eleventh century: “Exaudi, quaeso, Domine, preces nostras, et hunc ensem quo hic famulus N. se circumcingi desiderat, majestatis tuae dextera benedicere dignare.”[665]

Through the Middle Ages the fashions of feudalism did not remain unchanged; likewise its quintessential spirit, chivalry, was modified, and one may say, between the ninth and the fourteenth centuries, passed from barbarism to preciosity. Nevertheless the main ideals of chivalry endured, springing as they did from the fundamental and but slowly-changing conditions of feudal society. Since that society was constantly at war,[666] the first virtue of the knight was valour. Next, since life and property hung on mutual aid and troth, and a larger safety was ensured if one lord could rely upon his neighbour’s word, the virtues of truth-speaking and troth-keeping took their places in the chivalric ideal. Another useful quality, and means of winning men, was generosity (largesse). When coin is scarce, and stipulations for fixed pay unusual, he who serves looks for liberality, which, in accordance with feudal conditions, made the third of the chief knightly virtues.

Valour, troth, largesse, had no necessary connection with Christianity. It was otherwise with certain of the remaining qualities of a knight. According to Christian teaching, pride was the deadliest of sins. So haughtiness, boasting, and vain-glory were to be held vices by the Christian knight. He should show a humble demeanour, save toward the mortal enemies of God; and far from boasting, he should rather depreciate himself and his exploits, though never lowering the standard of his purpose to achieve. Humility entered knighthood’s ideal from Christianity; and so perhaps did courtesy, its kin, a virtue which was not among the earliest to enter knighthood’s ideal, and yet reached universal recognition.

Christianity also meant active charity, beneficence, and love of neighbour. These are virtues hard to import into a state of war. Fighting means harm-doing to an enemy; and only indirectly makes for some one’s good. Let there be some vindication of good in the fighting of a Christian knight: he shall be quick to right the wrong, succour distress, and quickest to bear help where no reward can come. Since knighthood’s ideals took form in crusading times, the slaughter of the Paynim became the supreme act of knightly warfare.

If such elements of the knightly ideal were of Christian origin, others still were even more closely part of mediaeval Christianity. First of these was faith, orthodox faith, heresy-uprooting, infidel-destroying, fides in the full Church sense. Without faith’s sacramental credentials—baptism, participation in the mass—no one could be a knight: and heresy degrades the recreant even before the scullion’s cleaver hacks off his spurs.

From faith knighthood advances to obedience to the Church, a vow expressly made by every knight on taking the Cross, and also incorporated in the Constitutions of the crusading Orders of Templars and Hospitallers. But does the knight pass on from obedience to chastity? This virtue might or might not enter knighthood’s ideal. It scarcely could exist with courtly or chivalric love;[667] and, in fact, knights commonly were either lovers or married men—or both. Yet even in the Arthurian literature there is the monkish Galahad, and many a sinful knight becomes a hermit in the end; and among real and living knights, the Templars and Hospitallers were vowed to celibacy. In these crusading orders the orbits of knighthood and monasticism cross; and it will not be altogether a digression to review the foundation and constitution of one of them.

The Order of the Temple was founded in the year 1118 by Hugh of Payns (Champagne) and other French knights; who placed their hands within those of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and vowed to devote themselves to the protection of pilgrims in the Holy Land. Probably they also bestowed their lands for the support of the nascent Order. Ten years afterwards Hugh passed through France and England, winning new recruits and appearing at the Council of Troyes. With the authority of that Council and of Pope Honorius II. the Regula pauperum commilitonum Christi Templique Salomonici was promulgated. St. Bernard, to whom it is ascribed, was in large part its inspiration and its author. It still exists in some seventy-two chapters; but one cannot distinguish between those belonging to the original document of 1128 and those added somewhat later.[668]

This regula with its amendments and additions was translated from Latin into Old French (par excellence the tongue of the Crusades), and became apparently the earliest form of the Regle dou Temple, upon which was grafted a mass of ordinances (retrais et establissemens). Apparently the whole of the extant Latin regula was prior to everything contained in the French regle; and accordingly we shall simply regard the Latin as containing the earliest regulations of the Temple, and the French as exhibiting the modifications of tone and interest which came in the course of years.

The hand of St. Bernard ensured the dominance of the monastic temper in the original regula; and Hugo, the first Master of the Temple, could not have been the Saint’s close friend without sharing his enthusiasms. So the prologue opens with a true monastic note:

This phraseology would suit the constitution of a sheer monastic order. And the first chapter exhorts these venerabiles fratres who renounce their own wills and serve the King (Christ) with horses and arms, zealously to observe all the religious services regularly prescribed for monks. The regula contains the usual monastic commands. For example, obedience to the Master of the Order is enjoined sine mora as if God were commanding, which recalls the language of St. Benedict.[669] Clothes are regulated, and diet; habitual silence is recommended; the brethren are not to go alone, nor at their own will, but as directed by the Master, so as to imitate Him who said, I came not to do mine own will, but His who sent me.[670] Again, chests with locks are forbidden the brothers, except under special permission; nor may any brother, without like permission, receive letters from parents or friends; and then they should be read in the Master’s presence.[671] Let the brethren shun idle speech, and above all let no brother talk with another of military exploits, “follies rather,” achieved by him while “in the world,” or of his doings with miserable women.[672] Let no brother hunt with hawks; such mundane delectations do not befit the religious, who should be rather hearing God’s precepts, and at prayer, or confessing their sins with tears. Yet the lion may always be hunted; for he goes seeking whom he may devour.[673]

The religio professed by the Templars is called, in the Latin rule, religio militaris, which the French translates “religion de chevalerie,” not incorrectly, but with somewhat different flavour.[674]

The pomp of the last sentence seems to remove from the tone of the earlier chapters, and suggests a later date. Another, possibly late, chapter (66) permits the knights to receive tithes, since they have abandoned their riches for spontaneae paupertati. Still another accords to married men a qualified admission to the brotherhood, but they may not wear the white robe and mantle (55). The next forbids the admission of sorores; and the last chapter of all (72) warns against the sight of women, and forbids the brethren to kiss one, be she widow, virgin, mother, sister or friend.

Thus the Latin regula formulates an order of monasticism with only the modifications imperatively demanded by the exigencies of holy warfare. The French regle elaborates the military organization and enhances the chivalric element. This begins to appear in the portions which are a translation (usually quite close) of the Latin rule. But even that translation makes changes, for example, omitting the period of probation required in the Latin text, before admitting a brother to the Order.[676] A striking change was made by the later French ordinances in the interrogations and proceedings for admission. The Latin formula begins in Cistercian phrase:

And so forth.

The substance of these and other questions was retained in the far longer French formula, which exacted specific promises of compliance with all the Order’s ordinances. But far removed from the original are such questions as the following: “Biau dous amis” (the ordinary phrase of the chivalric romance) have you, or has any one for you, made any promise to any one in return for his aid in procuring your admission, which would be simony? “Estes vos chevalier et fis de chevalier?”

Is the candidate a knight, and son of knight and lady, and are his “peres ... de lignage de chevaliers”? This means chivalry and gentle blood; and if the candidate answers in the negative, he cannot be admitted as a knight of the Temple, although he may be as “sergent,” or in some other character. Most noble and courtly is the phrasing of these statutes. Their frequent “Beaus seignors freres” is the address proper for knights rather than monks.[678]

Usually wherever the translation of the Latin regula ends, the Regle dou Temple passes on to provisions meeting the requirements of a military, rather than a monastic order. We enter upon such in the chapters governing the powers and privileges of the (Grand) Master, of the Seneschal, of the Marshal, of the “Comandeor de la terre de Jerusalem.” Many sections have to do with military discipline, with the ordering of the knights and their followers on the march and in the battle; they forbid the knights to joust or leave the squadron without orders.[679] Horses, armour, and accoutrements are regulated, and, in short, full provision is made for everything conducing to make the army efficient in war. There is also a long list of faults and crimes for which a knight may be disciplined or expelled; the latter shall be his punishment if he flee before the Saracens and forsake his standard in battle.[680]

The history of the Templars, significantly epitomized in the amendments to their regula, shows the necessary as well as inevitable secularization of a military monastic order; an order which for the purposes of this chapter may be placed among the chief historical examples of chivalry. For in this chapter we are not straying through the pleasant mazes of romantic literature, but are keeping close to history, with the intention of drawing from it illustrations of chivalry’s ideals. We shall not, however, enter further upon the story of the Order of the Temple, with its valorous and rapacious achievements and most tragic end; but will rather look to the careers of historic individuals for the illumination of our theme.

Reaching form and consciousness in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, chivalry became part of the crusading ardour of those times. All true knights were or might be Crusaders; and of a truth there was no purer incarnation of the crusading spirit than Godfrey of Bouillon, that figure of veritable if somewhat slender historicity, upon whom in time chronicler and trouvère alike were to fasten as the true hero of the enterprise that won Jerusalem. And so he was. Not that Godfrey was commander of the host. He was not even its most energetic or most capable leader. Boemund of Tarentum and Raymond of Toulouse were his superiors in power and military energy. But neither Boemund, nor Tancred, nor Raymond, nor any other of those princes of Christendom, was what Godfrey appears to us, the type and symbol of the perfect, single-hearted, crusading knight, fighting solely for the Faith, with Christian devotion and humility, and, like them all, with more than Christian wrath. The First Crusade (1096-1099) was stamped with hatred and slaughter: on the dreadful march, at the more dreadful siege and final sack of Antioch, and finally when the holy sepulchre’s defilement was washed out in Saracen blood. And there was no slaughterer more eager than Godfrey.

The cruelty and religious fervour of the Crusade are rendered in the words of Raymond of Agiles, one of the clergy in the train of Count Raymond of Toulouse, and an eye-witness of the capture of Jerusalem. After days of despairing struggle to effect a breach, success came as by the mercy of God:

So the Crusaders wrought; and what joy did they feel! Raymond continues:

So new songs of gladness burst from the hearts of the soldiers of the Cross. In a few days the princes made an election, and offered the kingdom to Count Raymond: he declined. Then Godfrey was made king; though he would not be crowned, nor would he ever wear a crown where his Lord had worn a crown of thorns. As a servant of Christ and of His Church he fought and ruled some short months till his death. His fame has grown because his heart was pure, and because, among the knights, he represented most perfectly the religious impulse of this crusade which fought its way through blood, until it poured out its new song of joy over the blood-drenched city. He errs who thinks to find the source and power of the First Crusade elsewhere than in the flaming zeal of feudal Christianity. There was doubtless much divergence of motive, secular and religious; but over-mastering and unifying all was the passion to wrest the sepulchre of Christ from paynim defilement, and thus win salvation for the Crusader. Greed went with the host, but it did not inspire the enterprise.

Doubtless the stories of returning knights awakened a spirit of romantic adventure, which stirred in later crusading generations. It was not so in the eleventh century when the First Crusade was gathering. The romantic imagination was then scarcely quickened; adventure was still inarticulate, and the literature of adventure for the venture’s sake was yet to be created. So the First Crusade, with its motive of religious zeal, is in some degree distinguishable from those which followed when knighthood was in different flower. If not the Crusades themselves, at least the Chansons of the trouvères who sang of them, follow a change corresponding with the changing taste of chivalry: they begin with serious matters, and are occupied with the great enterprise; then they become adventurous in theme, romantic, till at last even romantic love is infelicitously grafted upon the religious rage that won Jerusalem.

This process of change may be traced in the growth of the legends of the First Crusade and Godfrey of Bouillon. Something was added to his career even by the Latin Chronicles of fifty years later. But his most venturesome development is to be found in those French Chansons de geste which have been made into the “Cycle” of the First Crusade. Two of these, the Chansons of Antioche and Jerusalem, were originally composed by a contemporary, if not a participant in the expedition. They were refashioned perhaps seventy-five or a hundred years later, in the reign of Philip Augustus, by another trouvère, who still kept their old tone and substance. They remained poetic narratives of the holy war. In them the knights are fierce and bloody, cruel and sometimes greedy; but their whole emprise makes onward to the end in view, the winning of the holy city. These poems are epic and not romantic: they may even be called historical. The character of Godfrey is developed with legendary or epic propriety, through a heightening of his historic qualities. He equals or excels the other barons in fierce valour, and yet a touch of courtesy tempers his wrath. In Christian meekness and in modesty he surpasses all, and he refuses the throne of Jerusalem until he has been commanded from on high. At that he accepts the kingdom as a sacred charge in defence of which he is to die.

It is otherwise with a number of other chansons composed in the latter part of the twelfth and through the thirteenth century. Some of them (the Chanson des chétifs, for example) had probably to do with the First Crusade. Others, like the various poems which tell of the Chevalier au Cygne, were inaptly forced into connection with the family of Godfrey. They have become adventurous, and are studded with irrelevant marvels, rather than assisted to their denouements by serious supernatural intervention. Monsters appear, and incongruous romantic episodes; Godfrey’s ancestor has become the Swan-knight, and he himself duplicates the exploits previously ascribed to that half-fairy person. Knightly manners, from brutal have become courteous. Women throng these poems, and the romantic love of women enters, although not in the finished guise in which it plays so dominant a role in the Arthurian Cycle. Such themes, unknown to the earlier crusading chansons, would have fitted ill with a martial theme driving on through war and carnage (not through “adventures”) to the holy end in view.[682]

The Crusades open with the form of Godfrey of Bouillon. A century and a half elapses and they deaden to a close beneath the futile radiance of a saintlike and perfect knightly personality. St. Louis of France is as clear a figure as any in the Middle Ages. From all sides his life is known. We see him as a painstaking sovereign meting out even justice, and maintaining his royal rights against feudal turbulence and also against ecclesiastical encroachment. During his reign the monarchy of France continues to advance in power and repute. And yet there was no jot of worldly wisdom, and scant consideration of a realm sorely needing its ruler, in the Quixotic religious devotion which drew him twice across the sea on crusades unparalleled in their foolishness. For the world was growing wiser politically; and what was glorious feudal enthusiasm in the year 1099, was deliberate disregard of experience in the years 1248 and 1270.

Yet who would have had St. Louis wiser in his generation? The loss to France was mankind’s gain, from the example of saintly king and perfect knight, kept bright in the narratives of men equal to the task. Louis was happy in his biographers. Two among them knew him intimately and in ways affording special opportunities to observe the sides of his character congenial to their respective tempers. One was his confessor for twenty years, the Dominican Geoffrey of Beaulieu; the other was the Sire de Joinville. Geoffrey’s Vita records Louis’ devotions; Joinville’s Histoire notes the king’s piety; but the qualities which it illuminates are those of a French gentleman and knight and grand seigneur, like Joinville himself.

The book of the Dominican[683] is not picturesque. It opens with an edifying comparison between King Josiah and King Louis. Then it praises the king’s mother, Queen Blanche of pious memory. As for Louis, the confessor has been unable to discover that he ever committed a mortal sin: he sought faithful and wise counsellors; he was careful and gracious in speech, never using an oath or any scurrilous expression. In earlier years, when under the necessity of taking oath, he would say, “In nomine mei”; but afterwards, hearing that some religious man had objected to this, he restricted his asseverations to the “est, est” and “non, non” of the Gospel.

From the time he first crossed the sea, he wore no scarlet raiment, but clothed himself in sober garments. And as such were of less value to give to the poor than those which he had formerly worn, he added sixty pounds a year to his almsgiving; for he did not wish the poor to suffer because of his humble dress. Geoffrey gives the long tale of his charities to the poor and to the mendicant Orders. On the Sabbaths it was the king’s secret custom to wash the feet of three beggars, dry them, and kiss them humbly. He commanded in his will that no stately monument should be erected over his grave. He treated his confessors with great respect, and, while confessing, if perchance a window was to be closed or opened, he quickly rose and shut or opened it, and would not hear of his confessor doing it. In Advent season and Lent he abstained from marital intercourse. Some years before his death, if he had had his will, he would have resigned his kingdom to his son, and entered the Order of the Franciscans or Dominicans. He brought up his children most religiously, and wished some of them to take the vows.[684]

He confessed every Friday and also between times, if something occurred to him; and if he thought of anything in the night, he would send for his confessor and confess before matins.[685] After confession he always took his discipline from his confessor, whom he furnished with a scourge of five little braided iron chains, attached to an ivory handle. This he would afterwards put back into a little case, which he carried hanging to his belt, but out of sight. Such little cases he sometimes presented to his children or friends in secret, that they might have a convenient instrument of discipline. He wore haircloth next his flesh in the holy seasons, a habit distressing to his tender skin, until his confessor persuaded him to abandon this form of penance as ill comporting with his station. He replaced it by increasing his charities. His fasts were regular and frequent, till he lessened them upon prudent advice; for he was not strong. He would have liked to hear all the canonical hours chanted; and twice a day he heard Mass, and daily the Office for the Dead. Sometimes, soon after midnight, he would rise to hear matins, and then would take a quiet time for prayer by his bed. Likewise he loved to hear sermons. On returning over the sea, when the ships suffered a long delay, he had preaching three times a week, with the sermon specially adapted to the sailors, a class of men who rarely hear the Word of God. He prevailed on many of them to confess, and declared himself ready at any time to put his hand to a rope, if necessary, so that a sailor while confessing might not be called away by any exigency of the sea.

While beyond the sea, this good king, hearing that a Saracen Sultan had collected the books of their philosophy at his own expense for his subjects’ use, determined not to be outdone whenever he should return to Paris, a purpose which he amply carried out, diligently and generously supplying money for copying and renewing the writings of the Doctors. At enormous expense he obtained the Saviour’s crown of thorns and a good part of the true cross, from the emperor at Constantinople, with many other precious relics; all of which the king barefooted helped to carry in holy procession when they were received by the clergy of Paris.

The king was very careful in the distribution of ecclesiastical patronage, always seeing to it that the candidate was not already enjoying another benefice. His heart exulted when it came to him to bestow a benefice upon some especially holy man. He was most zealous in the suppression of swearing and blasphemy, and with the advice of the papal legate then in France issued an edict, providing that the lips of those guilty of this sin should be seared with hot irons; and when certain ones murmured, he declared that he would willingly suffer his own lips to be branded if that would purge his realm of this vice.

Such were the acts and qualities of Louis which impressed his Dominican confessor. They were the qualities of a saint, and would have brought their possessor to a monastery, had not his royal station held him in the world. The Dominican could not know the knightly nature of his royal penitent, and still less reflect it in his Latin of the confessional. For this there was needed the pen of a great gentleman, whose nature enabled him to picture his lord in a book of such high breeding that it were hard to find its fellow. This book is stately with the Sire de Joinville’s consciousness of his position and blood, and stately through the respect he bore his lord—a book with which no one would take a liberty. Yet it is simple in thought and phrase, as written by one who lived through what he tells, and closely knew and dearly loved the king. From it one learns that he who was a saint in his confessor’s eyes was also a monarch from his soul out to his royal manners and occasional royal insistence upon acts which others thought unwise. We also learn to know him as a knightly, hapless soldier of the Cross, who would not waver from his word plighted even to an infidel.

That St. Louis was a veritable knight is the first thing one learns from Joinville. The first part of my book, says that gentleman, tells how the king conducted his life after the way of God and the Church, and to the profit of his realm; the second tells of his “granz chevaleries et de ses granz faiz d’armes.” “The first deed (faiz) whereby ‘il mist son cors en avanture de mort’ was at our arrival before Damietta, where his council was of the opinion, as I have understood, that he ought to remain in his ship until he saw what his knights (sa chevalerie) should do, who made a landing. The reason why they so counselled him was that if he disembarked, and his people should be killed and he with them, the whole affair was lost; while if he remained in his ship he could in his own person renew the attempt to conquer Egypt. And he would credit no one, but leaped into the sea, all armed, his shield hanging from his neck, his lance in hand, and was one of the first upon the beach.”

This is from Joinville’s Introduction. He recommences formally:

Joinville continues relating the virtues of the king, and recording his conversations with himself:

Joinville was some years younger than his king, who loved him well and wished to help him. The king also esteemed Master Robert de Sorbon[686] for the high respect as a preudom in which he was held, and had him eat at his table. One day Master Robert was seated next to Joinville.

Master Robert plays a not altogether happy part in another scene, varicoloured and delightful:

The hopelessly worthy parvenu was quite outside this charmed circle of blood and manners.

Another story of Joinville opens our eyes to Louis’ views on Jews and infidels. The king was telling him of a grand argument between Jews and Christian clergy which was to have been held at Cluny. And a certain poverty-stricken knight was there, who obtained leave to speak the first word; and he asked the head Jew whether he believed that Mary was the mother of God and still a virgin. And the Jew answered that he did not believe it at all. The knight replied that in that case the Jew had acted like a fool to enter her monastery, and should pay for it; and with that he knocked him down with his staff, and all the other Jews ran off. When the abbot reproached him for his folly, he replied that the abbot’s folly was greater in having the argument at all. “So I tell you,” said the king on finishing his story, “that only a skilled clerk should dispute with misbelievers; but a layman, when he hears any one speak ill of the Christian law, should defend that law with nothing but his sword, which he should plunge into the defamer’s belly, to the hilt if possible.”

Well known is the hapless outcome of St. Louis’ Crusades: the first one leading to defeat and captivity in Egypt, the second ending in the king’s death by disease at Tunis. Yet in what he sought to do in his Lord’s cause, St. Louis was a true knight and soldier of the Cross. The spirit was willing; but the flesh accomplished little. Let us take from Joinville’s story of that first crusade a wonderfully illustrative chapter, giving the confused scenes occurring after the capture of Damietta, when the French king and his feudal host had advanced southerly through the Delta, along the eastern branch of the Nile. Joinville was making a reconnaissance with his own knights, when they came suddenly upon a large body of Saracens. The Christians were hard pressed; here and there a knight falls in the melée, among them

One notes the high-born courtesy with which the Sire de Joinville speaks of the gentlemen who had the honour of serving him. The fight goes on.

The knightliness of this scene is perfect, with its liege fealty and its carefulness as to the point of honour, its carefulness also that the vassal knight shall fail in no duty to his lord whereby the descent of his fief may be jeopardized. Monseigneur Erard (whom God absolve, we say with Joinville!) is very careful to have his lord’s assent and the approval of his fellows, before he will leave his lord in peril, and undergo still greater risk to bring him succour.

Well, the Count of Anjou brought such aid as created a diversion, and the Saracens turned to the new foe. But now the king arrives on the scene:

Then the king’s good knights charge into the battle, and fine feats of arms are done. The fighting is fierce and general. At length the king is counselled to bear back along the river, keeping close to it on his right hand, so as to reunite with the Duke of Burgundy who had been left to guard the camp. The knights are recalled from the melée, and with a great noise of trumpets and drums, and Saracen horns, the army is set in motion.

Again one feels the feudal chivalry. Now the affair becomes rather distraught. They set out to succour the Count of Artois, but are checked, and it is rumoured that the king is taken; and in fact six Saracens had rushed upon him and seized his horse by the bridle; but he had freed himself with such great strokes that all his people took courage. Yet the host is driven back upon the river, and is in desperate straits. Joinville and his knights defend a bridge over a tributary, which helps to check the Saracen advance, and affords an uncertain means of safety to the French. But there is no cessation of the Saracen attack with bows and spears. The knights seemed full of arrows. Joinville saved his life with an arrow-proof Saracen vest, “so that I was wounded by their arrows only in five places”! One of Joinville’s own stout burgesses, bearing his lord’s banner on a lance, helped in the charges upon the enemy. In the melée up speaks the good Count of Soissons, whose cousin Joinville had married. “He joked with me and said: ‘Seneschal, let us whoop after this canaille; for by God’s coif (his favourite oath) we shall be talking, you and I, about this day in the chambers of the ladies.’”

At last, the arbalests were brought out from the camp, and the Saracens drew off—fled, says the Sire de Joinville. And the king was there, and