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

exposing his body to execute and accomplish the command of our Creator', and
Geoffrey de Charny writes that whilst the monastic lile imposed hardships and
sacrifices they could not compare to those of the knightly order: 'there is no religious
order in which as much is suffered as has to be endured by these good knights who
go in search of deeds of arms in the right way'.
The romances also picked up on this theme. The questing knight began to seek
not great deeds or his lady love, but deeper spiritual answers; an idea most strongly
embodied in the tale ot the knight Perceval. In Chretien's 12th-century original the
Holy Grail - the cup supposedly used by Christ and the Apostles at the Last Supper
— appears as a side story to a tairly standard romance tale ot prowess and love.
It appears during the feast held at the mysterious castle of the Fisher King, carried as
part of a procession. Here it is its contents, a consecrated Host, which is important to
the story. In Wolfram von Esschenbach's 13th-century retelling, however, Perceval's
attempt to rediscover the Grail, and thereby his closeness to God, is a key theme.
By the 14th century the Grail has become the subject of a tale in its own right, and all
of Arthur's knights become part ot the quest for its rediscovery.
CRUSADING AND THE MILITARY
ORDERS
A key aspect of the relationship between Church and knighthood was the crusading
movement. Pope Urban lis preaching of the First Crusade in 1095 seems to have
captured the imagination of Europe's knights; it saw them join in huge numbers, and
whilst not all of them joined in order to free the holy places from the control ot
Muslims or to support their Orthodox brethren in the East — the stated aims of the
expedition - it is clear that the concept of fighting a war for Christ was an important
one. It was not a wholly novel concept. The Carolingian dynasty had fought major
wars against the Muslims of Moorish Spain and the pagan Saxons, and the Pope and
the Carolingian bishops were active and enthusiastic supporters of those campaigns.
The epics written about them, The Song of Roland especially, have all the same elements
and already make the point that war against the heathen was to be considered most
glorious. What the crusade ideology did was formalize and build on these concepts.
The forces were not those of a particular nation or kingdom, they became the army of
the God and his Church. Their participation was no longer just meritorious: the
crusader received absolution, remission of his sins. The impact of the crusades on
chivalry was to add to the coalescing concept of the spiritual knight, the warrior for