Chivalry was of course much more than about how men were to treat women. It was a rigorous code for knights that dealt with their relationships with all sorts of different people. We tend to have a negative view of chivalric codes as patriarchal and archaic, for good reason. (They’re patriarchal and archaic.) But the focus on behavior under these codes were how a certain class of men were to treat everyone who was weaker. And that’s a problem that’s not going away.... They’re acknowledging that male and female sexuality actually does need to be respected for its differences and that the average man is stronger than the average female, and as a result of all this, we need men to behave better for our civil society to keep functioning.Not everyone -- I was just telling Tex about the way the shepherd boy who followed Joan of Arc was treated, hamstrung and stitched in an oxhide and drowned. Men who were weaker might be treated gently if they had proven that they could do certain things, but not qua weaker. Just being weak got you nothing.
What is going on with chivalry is that there is a special virtue, a wonderful excellence of human capacity, in those men who could tame horses and ride them to war. They had to be brave to mount the horse. They had to be masters of themselves, because the horse is a prey animal who will spook at anything. They had to command and to lead the horse, but they had to be sensitive to its every least movement. Even a flicker of its skin, unconscious to the horse itself, carries meaning to an attentive rider.
To become the kind of man who could do these extraordinary things was to achieve almost the capstone of virtue. Aristotle gives the capstone virtue as magnanimity, 'being great-soul'd,' a step perhaps even beyond the horseman. Here is the one who is so fully good that he does not care if there is the slightest reward for his goodness. He does right in spite of the worst punishments, caring nothing for the consequences so long as he follows the dictates of honor. The best knight attains this too, but if he is to be a knight at all he must attain the virtue of chivalry. He must be able to sit a horse, however many times he has been thrown, and lead it into the smell of blood.
The reason for a man to do this is that this is what it means to flourish as a man. You can take a horse, twelve hundred pounds, lay your hand on him, and ride. The horse is stronger, bigger than you -- yet also weaker, less in understanding. You can develop a relationship with him such that control follows your least signal. In testing yourself against this mighty thing, you will become great. No one will trouble you. They will stand aside, unless they are one of the great themselves.
'I am with you at present,' said Gandalf, 'but soon I shall not be.... Do you not yet understand? My time is over: it is no longer my task to set things to rights, nor to help folk to do so. And as for you, my dear friends, you will need no help. You are grown up now. Grown indeed very high; among the great you are, and I have no longer any fear at all for any of you.'What is there to fear? Death? Not at all. Death has been faced many times, at least every time you lept in the saddle! So many times that Death is a comforting companion -- the road would not be quite right without him. Dishonor? Not while Death is your companion! Blood washes away dishonor, and he has trained himself to be such as to choose the blood over the dishonor every time.
Nothing here is archaic. The saddle and the man are there in the morning. They are the same as they have been, now and forever. If he lives this way, this man, he is doing it for reasons of his own that are fully satisfying. If it produces the kind of man you want -- and it is the kind you want, because how could you wish to claim 'equality' for yourself with any lesser man, the kind who steps aside from him with downcast eyes? -- that is a happy accident. He will treat you well, as long as he lives, because he is the right kind of man.
You have a society that produces few enough of these men, but not none. Look to that, if you want my advice.
Just do your duty and get on with it.
ReplyDeleteThat's about it.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what she thinks her duty is?
An interesting idea, though I think it can never be a successful one. And the author of the article is at least talking in reasonable tones -- not reveling in self-righteousness. Whether she's feminist or not, she doesn't have the soul of PC.
ReplyDeleteAs you know from our discussion at Cassandra's, I don't share your view of where chivalry comes from...I think it was the jus in bello of the knightly class, and that any warrior class is going to develop some kind of code whether or not its men are mounted. (And horsemen, if you go beyond the Age of Chivalry, do not always develop a code that looks like chivalry.)
If my view's correct, then chivalry isn't a way for men to become strong. It starts with the assumption that its men are strong, horsemanlike, and skilled in war...and regulates how they use that strength, most especially against each other. Chivalry in a strong man is seemly as is modesty in a gifted one - but an ugly man who isn't vain about his looks hasn't really added to his character.
Which is why I think her idea about modern feminism is doomed to failure. Modern feminism as I've encountered it does not start with the idea that men are strong or ought to be strong; and sometimes is opposed to the idea actively.
A man who accepts that he is carrying a load of collective guilt for the supposed crimes of his sex, and lives his life accordingly, is not going to project strength. He might wish to have courtly manners...but who cares? If he's rude he'll just be laughed off; if he's polite he'll be tolerated; but "chivalry" from him will have little meaning. He won't attract the other sex, or at least he'll be at a heavy disadvantage, and you won't build much of a civilization on men like him.
Until and unless we have a major shift in human nature...any revival of chivalry, be it the classic kind or a new kind, must take human nature into account, and that's human nature as it is. Strength and confidence do attract women, whether or not they're coupled to the nobler virtues; and any creed that encourages men to be otherwise than strong and confident is not going to be healthy for relations between the sexes.
I think it was the jus in bello of the knightly class, and that any warrior class is going to develop some kind of code whether or not its men are mounted. (And horsemen, if you go beyond the Age of Chivalry, do not always develop a code that looks like chivalry.)
ReplyDeleteWe've had this talk, and you know I think you are mistaken. First of all, the jus in bello came from the religious class, not the knights; but also, to say that any warrior class will develop 'some kind of code' is not to speak to the specific virtues that are necessary conditions for horsemanship.
I do agree that not every kind of horse-warrior looks just like a knight. But that doesn't, to my thinking, detract from the value of chivalry as a special flourishing: it just adds a glory to Christian morals, which achieve something even beyond the excellence of man and horse and steel.
As to the rest of what you say, though, I completely agree. There can be no hope in any creed that does not start from accepting that men not only can be but ought to be strong -- indeed, that their flourishing is in strength. Of course men ought to wish to flourish. What is more natural than that? Virtue leads them to flourishing.
The walk away from flourishing in men is a walk away from virtue. Make them weaker, and you make them less. If you want to be their equals, well, you had better take care about that. You are tying their fate to your own.
First of all, the jus in bello came from the religious class, not the knights.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that's correct. The jus ad bellum -- just war theory -- came from the priests, or at least they systematized and added to it. In some ways the medieval Church played the role of the U.N., attempting to resolve disputes and pronounce on just wars. But I never saw evidence that the just in bello -- like the notion of a "fair fight" -- had Churchly origins (unless you count the Truce of God).
But also, to say that any warrior class will develop 'some kind of code' is not to speak to the specific virtues that are necessary conditions for horsemanship.
That's true. But if Mongols, Mamelukes, Napoleon's cuirassiers, and the Ninth U.S. Cavalry...or Genghis Khan, William the Marshal, and Osama Bin Laden...didn't come out the same, or even much like each other at all, what good does it do to call the thing they had in common "chivalry"? In English I mean. Better to call it "horsemanship," or "cavalry art" or something (though I know the linguistic root's the same). Accept that horsemanship requires and builds a certain set of virtues, courage among them, but that a true Christian knight needed other virtues on top of those before he ought to be called "chivalrous."
In fact, I absolutely agree when you say this:
But that doesn't, to my thinking, detract from the value of chivalry as a special flourishing: it just adds a glory to Christian morals, which achieve something even beyond the excellence of man and horse and steel.
That is beautifully put and profoundly true. Taking the treatment of women around virile lusty young men...the chivalrous solution (of respect, honor, and courtly manners) is far more beautiful than the Salafi one (wrap them in burkas, lock them up, don't let them out without male escorts...that accomplished horseman bin Laden would approve, but a Christian knight would not).
Why speak of it in English? For one reason, because prowess was at the root of the virtue. Before -- and, indeed, after as well -- any kind of right of birth was spoken of, the question that was of foremost interest was what you could do with that horse.
ReplyDeleteBut I never saw evidence that the just in bello -- like the notion of a "fair fight" -- had Churchly origins (unless you count the Truce of God).
Now that's just what I was thinking of when I wrote it. Jus in bello comes out of that tradition, which limits targets (and, sometimes, times) of legitimate attack.
But in terms of 'fair fighting,' you know, that was always honored in the breach at best when it came to war. In tournament, certainly. In war, though, one did what had to be done.
It's going to be difficult to resurrect chivalry now that there's entire classes of people, males and females, that have little to no power over themselves or others.
ReplyDeleteThe government has the Power and Authority. They might as well apply the restraints of chivalry to the government, these socialites talking about feminist protocols.
That's of course no longer a relationship between man and woman, but more like dog and its master.
So there's two things, one of which we agree about and one of which we do not. We agree that what this author is describing is not chivalry; otherwise, we end up having to say things like, "How chivalrous! He abstained from stealing her nude pictures and spreading them all over the internet." That's absurdly removed from the flourishing content of chivalry; it would be like calling it heroism to refrain from spreading naked pictures around.
ReplyDeleteWhat we don't agree about is just how to bracket what chivalry is. Nevertheless, we can speak sensibly about "Arabian chivalry" versus "Christian chivalry," and recognize that we're talking about a quality that serves as a kind of universal to which the adjectives apply. Both have the mixture of honor and horsemanship that are necessary to ride a horse to war; the ways in which they differ are accidents to that essence.
Those accidents may still be quite important! I think it's worth fighting for Christian chivalry. But I don't think you need to make the Christian just war tradition essential to chivalry to capture the virtue.
It's better to talk about horsemanship and horse archery, and then how that leads to chivalry. Because if you start off with chivalry, 90% of the human masses think you're talking about a fantasy, not a reality.
ReplyDeleteArchery and riding horses, at least, is still reality in some people's mind.
My impression is that in America today, horsemanship is pursued by significantly more women than men. Do you think this is correct? If so, what (if anything) are the implications?
ReplyDeleteIt is, you are quite right. There is a combination at work that is absent here, though -- to tame a horse, and to ride it to war. So I am not sure there are implications.
ReplyDeleteStill, there are benefits to horsemanship alone. And if you have a son, by all means get him involved in that: he'll have his pick of the best women of his generation. Should he follow up on it by a career in the combat arms, he'll be a man other men stand aside for as well.