Osprey - General Military - Knight - The Warrior and ... - Brego-weard

should find himself commanding troops from time
to time.
There was no suggestion that such men should
take up weapons themselves, nor that they should
fight. They were still bound by the injunctions of
their calling and restricted to a role of leadership
only. This did not stop all of them from playing an
active part. Joinville records the actions of Jean de
Voysey, one of his priests. Some of the enemy had
built a redoubt from which they were shooting
arrows into the crusader encampment. As darkness
fell the priest,wearing only an aketon and a steel cap,
and trailing a spear, approached the Saracens and,
getting close, he suddenly charged them, causing
them to flee and allowing the stone entrenchment to
be taken down. 'From that time onward,' Joinville
writes, 'my priest was very well known throughout
the army, and one man or another would point him
out and say "Look, that's my Lord of Joinvilie's priest,
who got the better of eight Saracens.'"
Philippe of Dreux, the Bishop of Beauvais, had
a distinctively long and active military career. He
went to the Holy Land in 1180, after the fall
of Jerusalem to Saladin, and in the Third Crusade of
1189, where his support for his king, Philippe
Augustus of France, made him an enemy of Richard
'the Lionheart' of England. In 1197 Richard's troops
took the bishop captive during their assault on the
castle of Milli. The king held him for over a year,
refusing to set him free despite the protests of the
Pope's legate Peter of Capuano that as a churchman
he should be released. Richard argued that Philippe
had not been 'captured as a bishop but as a worthy
knight, fully armed and with his helm laced' and
therefore could not be treated as a member of
the clergy. The bishop went on to fight in the
Albigensian Crusade against the Cathar heretics in
southern France. He was serving the French king
again in 1214 at Bouvines where, although 63 years
old, he captured knights, including the English Earl
of Salisbury, William Longespee, by unhorsing them
with a mace before having some of his familia carry
them away claiming the capture in order that he was
not seen to have breached his vocation.
Philippe of Dreux typifies a certain type of
medieval churchman. Born of noble families and
sharing the society and culture of the knightly class, it
was inevitable that when the opportunity arose some
should respond to these influences and cast away the
mitre and crozier in favour of the helm and sword.
punishment. The justice of war also rested upon the disposition of the spirit and the
motivation of the conscience. Thus war should respect the Church, avoid needless
violence and atrocities, and show honour to one's enemy, as cruelty was a sign that war
was waged for the love of violence rather than of justice; The desire to harm, cruelty
in vengeance, an implacable spirit, unquenched ferocity in revolt, the desire to
dominate and other similar attitudes, if there are any, that is what the law condemns
in warfare.'
The mixed feelings of the Church towards war are indicated by the penitentials:
texts which laid out the penances due for sins. These recognized the rightness of killing
in legitimate warfare, but still allocated penances for the shedding of blood, indicating
a period away from the Church and the sacraments, fasting and then reconciliation
with the Church in humility. The distinctions could be sophisticated. Four years after