De Charny also suggested what the knights should do to resist the stress factors. He said knights should fight for a good cause to avoid succumbing to the pressures of war. A ‘good cause’ should be God’s cause – a war for a higher and just cause, to reinstate law and order – and not for personal gain.
“On the one hand we can see that de Charny was a very conscientious man – and in the Middle Ages conscience was regarded as God’s way of telling us how to relate to rights and wrongs.
“On the other hand, he was a warrior who took part in several wars over a period of 30 years, including a crusade to the city we call Ismir. War and crusades are by definition violent,” says Heebøll-Holm.
Oh, yes, by definition. But: "on the one hand / on the other hand"? What exactly is the conflict between being conscientious and being a warrior?
Yes, these knucklheads would run screaming for their enemy's blood, they could rarely taste it.
ReplyDeleteWhen they did, it was spectacular.Viz the French wars of Henry the Fifth.
Calling de Charny "a man with a conscience" rather than "a conscientious man" would be a more fortuitous phrase...
ReplyDeleteYou're right: that would have been better. On the other hand, given his remarks about how the conscience 'was regarded,' he may not see the distinction.
ReplyDeleteDe Charny had a conscience; conscience tells us what is right and wrong; de Charny was unabashedly violent. Tilt! Tilt! Everyone knows all violence is inherently wrong!
ReplyDeleteI don't know what's sadder: a journalist that doesn't know any better than this, or a journalist so ignorant of the Middle Ages that he doesn't realize his own cherished modern views were not generally shared in that era.
"Tilt! Tilt!"
ReplyDeleteI think that's the truth of it, right there.
What's telling isn't that he finds it a self-contradictory position, it's that he doesn't even seem to have an understanding of the position opposite his. Strikes me as intellectually incurious, as they say.
ReplyDelete“His picture of knights shows they are very remote from the violent psychopaths that we picture them as.”
ReplyDeleteWe? I've never read any account which painted knights as excessively violent, let alone as psychopaths.
Methinks the author projecteth overmuchly -- 'waaaaay overmuchly.
You're forgetting Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which is perhaps this author's entire experience of the chivalric tradition.
ReplyDeleteYou've read "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"!?! I've been scouring libraries for it for decades!
ReplyDeleteOh, yes, in the original.
ReplyDelete