1 of 3

Toward the end of the tenth century, Adalberon, bishop of Laon, wrote, “There is a noble class which comprises the warriors and protectors of the churches. They defend all the people, great and small, and, incidentally, protect themselves.”

This class was no group of ruffians looking for a fight, at least not after the dynamic reformation that swept through Europe from roughly 1000 to 1300. Like the sixteenth-century Reformation, this movement sought to restore the values of the early church. In regard to the warrior class, it encouraged the rise of chivalry and the glorification of the Christian knight.

Though only an elite few became knights, nearly every medieval person had contact with them. Furthermore, the values of the ruling class, composed of princes and knights, permeated society.

Bishop Adalberon also wrote this: “The city of God we believe is not only one but subdivided into three parts: some pray, others fight, and still others work.… The service of each allows the contributions of the other two. Each, in turn, lends its support to all.”

If Adalberon’s description of medieval society is too simple, everyone agreed that those “others” who “fight”—princes and knights—must protect their people against invasion and internal disorder.

Medieval people thought the house of God—church and society together—required strong governing. Bernard of Clairvaux, the Cistercian monk who led the early 1100s reform movement, wrote, “Where a multitude is gathered together without any contract of peace, without any observance of law, without discipline or a ruling head, it is called not a people but a mob, not a state but confusion.” So a ruling class was necessary to keep order.

The ruling class was obliged first to seek the welfare and salvation of the people they ruled. Bernard’s friend and younger contemporary, the scholarly John of Salisbury, wrote, “Between a tyrant and a good prince there is this single difference: the good prince obeys the law, and rules the people by its dictates, accounting himself as but their servant.… On the prince falls the burdens of the whole community. So there is rightly conferred on him … power over all his subjects, so that he may seek and bring about the welfare of all and each.”

The fate of princes and knights who did not live up to this standard was an example to all. As John of Salisbury put it, “To kill a tyrant is not only legitimate, but fair and just. For he who lives by the sword deserves to die by the sword.”

Bernard found biblical inspiration for a fighting class in David, the warrior king of Israel. Warfare was seen as sometimes necessary. The crucial concern was motivation: the warrior must fight for God rather than the world. Writing about Louis VII, who went on a crusade to the Holy Land, Bernard said, “Our king serves so that the King of heaven shall not lose his land, the land ’on which his feet have stood’” (Psalm 131:7).

Thus to battle in the service of God was a virtue. For Bernard, to kill without reason was homicidal; to kill for justice’s sake was malicidal—the killing of evil.

To fulfill the functions assigned him by society, the medieval warrior had to possess certain virtues. Foremost among these, of course, was military prowess. His role demanded not only great physical strength and skill, but also courage and steadfastness, integrity and loyalty, generosity and humility.

In the 1200s, missionary and philosopher Ramon Lull wrote a popular treatise on chivalry, which set forth some of the prerequisites for knighthood:

next page... |  1 of 3

share this page

RSS Feed   RSS Help