The Spiritual Essence of Knighthood and the Stunning Beauty of Knightly “Ordination”
Knights, chivalry, tournaments, damsels in distress.... Modern entertainment media has kept their memory alive but through caricatures instead of the real thing.
After discussing the Song of Roland and the Song of My Cid, whose characters include some of the most famous warriors of the Middle Ages, I’m in a chivalric frame of mind. That means it’s time to explore medieval knighthood, and more specifically, to counteract the influence of modern literature and media, which tends to trivialize or sensationalize a topic that is, in actuality, fascinating, and beautifully human, and filled with relevance for our own lives.
To some extent even medieval literature does this: the Romances of the later Middle Ages are so preoccupied with amorous intrigues and extravagant adventures that they can obscure the true substance of knighthood—especially for modern readers, who will never see a real knight in a real suit of armor riding out on his charger to a real battle. I dare say that if we did, the Disney version wouldn’t be so interesting anymore. And if we could be there when he returned from that battle—if we could smell the blood, touch the broken sword, see his trembling limbs, hear his faltering prayers—we probably wouldn’t be much in the mood for Hollywood “action” scenes or even for brilliant scoffers like Sir Walter Scott. Instead, we would want to know who that man behind the chain mail really was.
A knight is defined as a warrior trained for mounted combat, and “chivalry” refers to the culture of honorable conduct and religious devotion that gradually surrounded military knighthood and eventually merged with it. This quintessentially medieval institution—chivalric knighthood—did not develop by accident. Rather, it was the fruit of long labors undertaken by those who believed that human nature was more than mere flesh, that warfare should be more than mere violence, and that the death of a soldier’s body was not the end of his existence.
The Roman army won battles with their infantry; cavalry played a supporting role. After the decline and reconfiguration of the western Roman Empire, mounted warriors became a more decisive military force, and the Germanic peoples who spread throughout Europe readily adapted to this style of warfare. One of the turning points was the battle of Tours, in 732, when Charles Martel and his Franks came face to face with their Islamic enemies’ light cavalry. Europeans began to place more emphasis on training for mounted combat, and as light cavalry employed more armor, longer spears, and larger horses, they looked more and more like the knights—the heavy cavalry—that we know today.
The medieval heavy cavalryman was the equivalent of the modern battle tank. And we can all imagine the problems that might arise if Europe were home to numerous tanks operated by vainglorious, semi-independent military veterans with an ancestral penchant for savage warfare. Knights thus became a threat to the social order, engaging in reckless violence and shifting medieval culture toward unruly tribalism. Monks and bishops, animated by the Christian vision of communal life and human destiny, responded with a momentous and multifaceted process of civilizing and spiritualizing Europe’s new warrior class. Pacifism was not an option; instead, the Church gradually taught errant, belligerent cavalrymen to live and fight as heroic knights devoted to God and to the quest for a godly society.
The knightly virtues—faith, religion, charity, honesty, courage, compassion, protection of women, and defense of the weak—represented a chivalric ideal, but it wasn’t merely an ideal. The ethos of chivalry captured the imagination of medieval society and transformed it from within. It has captured many twenty-first-century imaginations as well, but modern society doesn’t know quite what to do with it, because we turn away from its essence. The heroism and elegance, the passionate romances, the displays of prodigious valor and skill, the poetic lore and supernatural aura—all that is enchanting and inspiring in chivalric culture began in the medieval belief that everything we do, even warfare, can be an expression of our spirituality.
At its best, the ceremony of investiture for a medieval knight was a dramatic masterpiece of august ritual and elevating symbolism. Its character is so sacred as to evoke the ordination of a priest. Merely to read of it is a moving experience, and for those who were present, it must have been unforgettable. The abbreviated account below is based on the research of a Spanish historian and professor named José Luis Martínez Sanz.
The day before the ceremony, the aspirant to knighthood brushes his hair and his beard. He takes a long bath to cleanse his body, recalling the divine bath of baptism that cleansed his soul when he was an infant.
During the night he keeps vigil in church, offering his thoughts to God and his weapons to God’s holy cause.
He awakens and is vested in a white tunic, perfectly clean, to show that the body of a knight is chaste, and the heart of a knight is pure. He wears also a purple cloak, symbol of the blood he is willing to shed for God, and brown leggings, symbol of the earth to which his body must someday return.
After he has attended Mass, confessed his sins, and received Holy Communion, his squires place spurs on his feet, to signify his swiftness in obeying the will of God.
His feudal lord—or perhaps some greater nobleman who has come for the occasion, or even the king himself—hands him a double-edged sword, for the knight must be loyal to his lord but also just in the sight of God.
The aspirant kneels. The lord draws his sword and strikes him on the shoulder, warning him never to deal treacherously and never to swear falsely, and exhorting him to honor women and practice his religion devoutly.
The aspirant rises a knight, and his lord embraces him.
Tennyson’s poem “Sir Galahad” has too much nineteenth-century faux medievalism for my taste, but a few lines are worth quoting by way of conclusion:
My good blade carves the casques of men,
My tough lance thrusteth sure,
My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure.
Thank you for this interesting and respectful essay.
May I add the importance of the knight’s horse, intricately trained in maneuvers that made it a weapon itself, the battle platform of the knight.
The warrior was required to ride with his body and less his hands, which must be used to swing the heavy sword, hold his shield or fend off other forms of attack. The horse learned to respond to commands without words in order to fight in close quarters.
The successful training of the horse by the knight was another expression of his virtue.
Today these same equine skills are continued in dressage, now an expression of beauty but still a reflection of virtue when the horse is trained correctly and without cruelty to force its compliance.