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

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

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Where the Church could not stop war within Europe it sought to redirect it<br />

elsewhere. Part of the rationale behind the preaching of the First Crusade was to<br />

redirect the violent energies of the warrior class away from internecine warfare <strong>and</strong><br />

unite them against a common enemy more suited to the Church's views on warfare.<br />

<strong>The</strong> crusade continued to be used by the Church in this way throughout the medieval<br />

period. In the 14th century the Church attempted to address the problem of the Great<br />

Companies <strong>and</strong> routierd that were ravaging France by offering to engage them for<br />

crusades in the east. <strong>The</strong> companies of both Sir John Hawkwood, the great condottiere<br />

captain, <strong>and</strong> the French freelance Bertr<strong>and</strong> du Guesclin made noises about going on<br />

crusade, although in the end neither did.<br />

<strong>The</strong> medieval Church, then, recognized that it could not eliminate war, but that it<br />

could attempt to regulate <strong>and</strong> direct the warriors' behaviour. It recognized the knights<br />

as one of the three divinely ordained ordined, or orders, of society. <strong>The</strong> pugnatored,<br />

'those who fight', ranked alongside the oratored, 'those who pray', <strong>and</strong> the laboratored,<br />

'those who work', in a mutually supportive model of society. <strong>The</strong> Church adopted the<br />

knight <strong>and</strong> his equipment as metaphors for the Christian's struggle against evil. Here<br />

it was building on passages from the Old Testament, using Isaiah 59:17 <strong>and</strong> Ephesians<br />

6:10-17, which refer to the donning of the armour of God, but extended the metaphor<br />

considerably.<br />

Its writers also appealed directly to the knights themselves. <strong>The</strong>y cajoled <strong>and</strong><br />

threatened with damnation, warning of the dire consequences of the pomp, vanity <strong>and</strong><br />

violence of the knightly life. Orderic Vitalis tells the tale of the mednie Hellequin.<br />

A monk named Walchelin was returning to his home late one January night when<br />

he heard the commotion ol a b<strong>and</strong> of horsemen approaching. Four troops of ghosts<br />

passed him by: a group of commoners, then women riding side-saddle, the third a<br />

party of priests <strong>and</strong> monks <strong>and</strong>, finally, an army of knights, all black save for flickering<br />

flames. <strong>The</strong> monk tried to grab one of the horses, seeking proof of what he had<br />

witnessed, but he was attacked <strong>and</strong> beaten off. One of the knights was the monk's<br />

dead brother. He describes his torments, saying 'I have endured severe punishments<br />

for the great sins with which I am heavily burdened. <strong>The</strong> arms which we bear are red<br />

hot, <strong>and</strong> offend us with an appalling stench, weighing us down with intolerable weight,<br />

<strong>and</strong> burning with everlasting fire.' He went on to explain how his spurs were wreathed<br />

with fire, 'because I used bright sharp spurs in my eager haste to shed blood'.<br />

He finally warned his brother of the damnation that would pursue him too, but also<br />

explains that because of the monk's vocation <strong>and</strong> prayers their father had been spared<br />

the same torment <strong>and</strong> his own suffering had been eased.<br />

<strong>The</strong> leading 12th-century ecclesiastic Bernard of Clairvaux dem<strong>and</strong>ed of the<br />

secular knight:<br />

CHIVALRY: THE KNIGHTLY CODE -

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