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By Root 1517 0

of noble life. That it was about four parts in five illusion made it no less governing for all that. It developed at the same time as the great crusades of the 12th century as a code intended to fuse the religious and martial spirits and somehow bring the fighting man into accord with Christian theory. Since a knight’s usual activities were as much at odds with Christian theory as a merchant’s, a moral gloss was needed that would allow the Church to tolerate the warriors in good conscience and the warriors to pursue their own values in spiritual comfort. With the help of Benedictine thinkers, a code evolved that put the knight’s sword arm in the service, theoretically, of justice, right, piety, the Church, the widow, the orphan, and the oppressed. Knighthood was received in the name of the Trinity after a ceremony of purification, confession, communion. A saint’s relic was usually embedded in the hilt of the knight’s sword so that upon clasping it as he took his oath, he caused the vow to be registered in Heaven. Chivalry’s famous celebrator Ramon Lull, a contemporary of St. Louis, could now state as his thesis that “God and chivalry are in concord.”

But, like business enterprise, chivalry could not be contained by the Church, and bursting through the pious veils, it developed its own principles. Prowess, that combination of courage, strength, and skill that made a chevalier preux, was the prime essential. Honor and loyalty, together with courtesy—meaning the kind of behavior that has since come to be called “chivalrous”—were the ideals, and so-called courtly love the presiding genius. Designed to make the knight more polite and to lift the tone of society, courtly love required its disciple to be in a chronically amorous condition, on the theory that he would thus be rendered more courteous, gay, and gallant, and society in consequence more joyous. Largesse was the necessary accompaniment. An open-handed generosity in gifts and hospitality was the mark of a gentleman and had its practical value in attracting other knights to fight under the banner and bounty of the grand seigneur. Over-celebrated by troubadours and chroniclers who depended on its flow, largesse led to reckless extravagance and careless bankruptcies.

Prowess was not mere talk, for the function of physical violence required real stamina. To fight on horseback or foot wearing 55 pounds of plate armor, to crash in collision with an opponent at full gallop while holding horizontal an eighteen-foot lance half the length of an average telephone pole, to give and receive blows with sword or battle-ax that could cleave a skull or slice off a limb at a stroke, to spend half of life in the saddle through all weathers and for days at a time, was not a weakling’s work. Hardship and fear were part of it. “Knights who are at the wars … are forever swallowing their fear,” wrote the companion and biographer of Don Pero Niño, the “Unconquered Knight” of the late 14th century. “They expose themselves to every peril; they give up their bodies to the adventure of life in death. Moldy bread or biscuit, meat cooked or uncooked; today enough to eat and tomorrow nothing, little or no wine, water from a pond or a butt, bad quarters, the shelter of a tent or branches, a bad bed, poor sleep with their armor still on their backs, burdened with iron, the enemy an arrow-shot off. ‘Ware! Who goes there? To arms! To arms!’ With the first drowsiness, an alarm; at dawn, the trumpet. ‘To horse! To horse! Muster! Muster!’ As lookouts, as sentinels, keeping watch by day and by night, fighting without cover, as foragers, as scouts, guard after guard, duty after duty. ‘Here they come! Here! They are so many—No, not as many as that—This way—that—Come this side—Press them there—News! News! They come back hurt, they have prisoners—no, they bring none back. Let us go! Let us go! Give no ground! On!’ Such is their calling.”

Horrid wounds were part of the calling. In one combat Don Pero Niño was struck by an arrow that “knit together his gorget and his neck,” but he fought on against the enemy on