CHIVALRY AND THE MICHAELITE :
Why you don't need to teach an old code new tricks
Chivalry is dead.
So, according to Nietzsche, is God. Then again, He was according to the Apostles too. One of them in particular, Saint Mary Magdalena, had the unenviable task of telling the rest of them that He was dead and then - about forty hours later - correcting herself and saying, "He is risen!"
It is any wonder Thomas doubted her?
Mark Twain was announced as dead - and he said that those reports were greatly exaggerated. Then again, he doesn't say that any more - because he is dead. Or is he? Can anyone say for certain if someone who has died is truly "dead"? Christ Himself came to earth and died so that men might not know death but might have everlasting life.
Of course, immortal Christians - in the sense of physical beings wandering this vale of tears - are not common. In fact, they are not present - all physical beings die and rot and worms eat them; but Christians live forever.
So, everything dies. But not everything stays dead, nor indeed is that death necessarily total or complete.
In the West, we have a rather bleak view of death - it is really a product of the secular Enlightenment and the general, pervasive, unconscious fear that comes from knowing, deep in your heart, that your life hasn't actually been that virtuous. People will say - while young and healthy - that they do not think there is anything after death, or that there is a general "reward" where the "good people" enjoy something. When asked about details, they go rather vague - and none of them can agree on what is good and right.
But when the secular men of the Enlightenment get older, their Reason begins to desert them. There is a fear of death - a fear of annihilation, of oblivion. Even, sometimes, a dread of an undiscovered country after death - and that fear is not just the fear of the unknown. Men know what awaits them, and that is what they fear.
Then there are those who do not fear death - there always have been, in every culture and every time. Universally, these people share characteristics - across the divides of civilization and era - and these characteristics are sadly lacking in our modern, post-Enlightenment society. Those who do not fear death are its constant companions - they live in a world where death is commonplace and simply viewed as the necessary end of life - and they have something to live for.
Consider that for a second - those who fear death have no reason to want to cling to life, yet they do. Those who are unfazed by the concept of death always have something to live for, yet are always ready to cast their lives away for that code of belief. If your memory is pricking you that this sounds akin to something Christ said, you will find what you seek towards the end of the tenth chapter of Matthew.
Historically, there have been many bodies of men - and women, too - who were unworried by death. The early Church and the Apostles were such a group of people; the threat of death was their constant companion, both from the Romans when they were Jews and from the Roman and the Jewish authorities when they were Christians. Feasts of the saints of the early Church are awash with crimson and scarlet - the very color of blood has come to symbolize Apostleship.
Apostles live by a code - they follow Christ, and do not let anyone tell you that this is not a code of action and belief. Never let someone say to you that some ephemeral concept of "being nice" is all that is required to be a follower of Christ - those who say that have ignored what He Himself said while He was on earth.
Orders of monks and nuns, Sisters and Brothers in cloisters and out of them - they live by a code (often the Rule of Benedict or one of its offshoots) and death is never far away. For years monks and nuns have tended the sick, run hospices and seen the final hours of life play out again and again and again. Do not think that the death of others does not teach one to consider it light; the death of those near to us can effect us in profound ways. Ask yourself; would you rather die or have one you loved die? Again, if your memory is pricking you, try the very middle of the fifteenth chapter of John.
But we began this conversation with chivalry, and to it we return. There are men - and women, do not think that combat is the exclusive province of the male - for whom death was nothing, and to whom death was a constant companion, and who lived by a code. Each nation and every era has had them - history calls them knights, and each civilization gives them their particular name based on the fact they ride horses.
The samurai - the name means "servant", and you should remember that for later - were known as bushi; ones who followed the code of bushido - the way of the horse and bow. The upper rank of the Roman hierarchy were called equestrians - equus means horse. Medieval knights in the western European tradition followed a code which became known as chivalry - coming (by a long and circuitous route) from the vulgar Latin caballus - meaning horse. The Germanic peoples - ever practical in their language - called their knights Ritter - meaning rider.
Why call them horsemen? Why not call them ones who follow a code? Why make such a point of the manner in which they travel and fight?
Horses are large creatures - we forget their size in our modern world, but a man seated on the back of a stallion or mare towers above the infantry around him. Everyone can see him - he is, without a doubt, a target. His steed can get him into combat faster than a foot soldier, it allows him to bear heavier loads. A knight is first in the charge and last in the retreat, the bodyguard of the King. Make no mistake, this is not about glory - this is about responsibility.
Knights take the greatest casualties as they win the highest honors. Knights suffer the most grievous wounds - ever to the fore - as they win the most important battles. It is Knights who protect their people and offer loyalty to those above them.
Samurai means servant, and the very word knight comes from the Old English cniht, which also means servant. Again, your memory should be plucking at you - there is no single reference for this, but consider the center of the twenty-second chapter of Luke.
This servitude - this adherence to a code of honor and a way of life - coupled with an awareness of what death truly is (for death need not be the terrifying thing we make it out to be) renders one fearless before the threat of death. It turns the knight into the servant-leader ready to cast away his life - and in return receive it back - that Christ spoke of throughout the Gospels.
The Christian knight owes fealty to a very specific code. That code is chivalry - the code I said was dead.
The first two commandments of chivalry were to believe what the Church taught, and then to defend Her. In them, all the other commandments are contained - for the Church has always taught piety and bravery and honesty and defense of the weak and downtrodden.
The emblem of the Christian warrior is the Maltese cross - the cross with eight points which symbolize the chivalric virtues of loyalty, piety, frankness, bravery, glory and honor, contempt of death, helpfulness towards the poor and sick, and respect for the Church. Chivalry is an intrinsic part of the ideal of the Christian warrior - and being a warrior for Christ who fights the spiritual war is really what being a Christian is about. You have already looked at the tenth chapter of Matthew - check verse thirty-eight. War is our heritage, battle cries our native tongue.
Chivalry is often thought of as devotion to women - an almost sexual and adulterous sort of "love" from bawdy romances such as Tristan and Yseult and the Lancelot cycle. And it is true that a great part of chivalry is devotion to women - but not as lascivious objects of desire. No, chivalry began from a devotion to Mary - a return from the flawed idea of seeing women first as Eve, the traitor in the Garden. Chivalric knights saw women as the Blessed Virgin - or at least as having the potential to reflect her.
Feminism has undone the work of the knights and the troubadours - feminism should be the glorification of the feminine, but it has done exactly the opposite. Only a female can be a mother or a daughter - so why are these roles demeaned and marginalized by the very women who call themselves feminists? Why does the modern woman say she is "only" a wife and mother? Isn't being the creature loved and adored by a husband and children (whom you love and adore) over and above every other breathing thing on this world enough?
Chivalry speaks of service - of duty, of obedience, of fealty. It is about being prepared to give everything you have - your blood, your life, your soul - to the Church and to God, to your family and people. It is to serve your Master with everything - physically, financially, spiritually, intellectually - no matter what the cost.
Does that happen any longer? Even setting aside the secularization of the world where people will bend the knee to almost anything except the Living God, do people pledge themselves to anything anymore? The ethos of the servant, of sacrifice, of willing slavery to a higher ideal - is this found anywhere? People seem to want to be in charge of their own lives, to be in control and calling the shots. People don't want to be told what to do - they dislike rules, they dislike regulations. No-one believes in the idea of truth any more.
Chivalry is dead.
I said that earlier, and I stand by it now. When Nietzsche said that God was dead he did not mean that God was no more - Nietzsche did not believe in God's existence at any time - but rather meant that the influence the idea of God had on the world was no more, was fading. In this post-Enlightenment world, perhaps he was right.
Few fear God any more. Fewer love Him. The ranks of His loyal followers thin day by day.
We can say "God is dead" and mean it in a very specific, narrow, metaphorical way - or we can add "And He is risen again!" and mean it literally. God died at Calvary - there is no Easter Sunday without a Good Friday.
Is chivalry literally dead? It is totally absent? Is the ideal of a code of honor which allows one to laugh in the face of death and pledge oneself to unending service to God and the Church and one's fellow man dead and gone?
Or is it dead in the sense that few are effected by it any more?
How many people really follow it? How many people can journey around the points of that Maltese cross and honestly say they have bloodied their palms on each and every one? Is the influence of chivalry fading in this modern, post-Enlightenment, feminist, secular world? A world where we are called to be anything but servants, a world where we are told to cling to life yet we live for nothing?
Chivalry is dead - its influence wanes. People call it outmoded, ancient, sexist, primitive - and it is all of these things.
It is ancient - only the good endures. It is sexist - for the sexes are not the same. It is primitive - for all truth is simple.
It is outmoded - but that does not mean the new modes are right.
In Nietzsche's voice, I say chivalry is dead. In Mark Twain's voice, I say that reports of its death are greatly exaggerated.
Let's ride.