Dr. Robert Hickson 27 March 2015Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Saint John Damascene (d. 749)Saint Rupert of Salzburg (d. 720)

Reflections on the Higher Chivalry of Loyal Catholic Christianity

--Epigraphs--

The sophists are under a gross misapprehension! A nation which loves luxury first [cf. the deadly sin of luxuria in Latin, i.e., carnal lust and lechery] is a nation lost! Such a one will be pushed aside, and obliterated by the more manly and vigorous race. It wasit isChivalry that saves nations! It is their very essence, and Chivalry disdains all those petty luxuries and the ease of a nerveless life. It despises suffering: it is the old command put in action, Esto vir.The last commandment of the ancient Code [the Vows of Chivalry] appears to us to be more needed in the observance now. It is: Do not lie! Be truthful! I understand by that the feeling of horror of all the finesse, white lies, and petty insincerities, which in so many shades darken the vistas of our lives! Of all things here below Chivalry is most opposed to the insinuation, to the shade of untruth! Chivalry would have us meet the daily danger with the most luminous frankness. We should never conceal our badge or banner. If we believe in Christ, let us, like those early martyrs, cry out: I am a Christian! [Christianus sum!]. Let us, with open brow, and transparent soul, learn, not only how to die for the truth, but learn also, what is much more difficult, how to live in it! [To live in the truth.] (Lon Gautier, Chivalry (New York: Crescent Books, 1989), pp. 498-499my emphasis added.)

***

Lon Gautier's own Dedication to his own 500-page book, Chivalry:

I dedicate this work to the memory of MIGUEL CERVANTES SAAVEDRA who laughed at Chivalry in his books and was a true 'Chevalier' in his life. I dedicate it to the greatest of Spanish authors and to one of the most valiant soldiers of Spainthe author of Don Quixotethe wounded Knight of Lepanto! (Chivalry (1989), in the Frontispiece-Dedication)

***

Our boys [in the French Foreign Legion] don't know all you do [Father, who was then the little Cur of Ambricourt]. They simply identify God [now] with a justice they despise, because it's a justice without honour....They [Roland, Bishop Turpin et al. in the epic of The Song of Roland] were well worth the fine ideal they were trying to represent....Our peoples had chivalry in their blood. The

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Church merely had to bless it.....Soldiers, just soldiers....they were protectors of the City, not slaves to it [as they were in Pagan Rome]....they did stand for a kind of justice, which for centuries and centuries has haunted the sadness of the poor, or sometimes filled their dreams....One day it was rumoured all over the Christian world that there was going to arise a kind of police-force [militia, chivalry] of the Lord Jesus....When you think of the huge uninterrupted success of a book like Don Quixote, you're bound to realize that if humankind have not yet finished being revenged, by sheer laughter, for being let down in their greatest hope [for justice with honour], it was because that hope was cherished so long and lay so deep! .These soldiers [of chivalry] belonged to Christianity alone, and Christianity belongs to no one now. There is no Christianity now....Because there are no more soldiers. No soldiers, no Christianity....The last real soldier died on May 30, 1431, and you [churchmen] killed her, you people. Not only killed her: condemned her, cut her off, burned her....And that soldier was raised so high, because she was the last. The last of a race had to be a saint. God wished it to be a woman. Out of respect for the ancient covenant of chivalry. The old sword rests for ever across knees that the proudest among us could not kiss without shedding tears. How I love the discreet reminder of the [risk-filled but yet splendid] tournament: Honneur aux Dames!....I saw that his [the Legionnaire's] eyes were sorrowful, a sorrow I knew. And such sorrow gets my soul on the raw....What is your grudge against the Church? I [i.e., the little Cur of Ambricourt] said at last, foolishly....You've [you of the Church have] secularized us. The first real secularization was that of the soldier....Each of his words stirred in the depth of my heart....Should we [priests] ever know how to die as they [these legionnaires] do?....For one moment I hid my face, appalled to feel the tears slip between my fingers. To weep in his presence like a child....I let him see my sorrowful face, my shameful tears. He looked at me for a long time. Oh, pride is still very much alive in me ! I was watching for a smile of scorn, or at least of pity on those wilful lipsI feared his pity more than his scorn.You're a good lad, he said at last. I wouldn't like any priest but you around when I was dying. (Georges Bernanos, The Diary of a Country Priest (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1937), pp. 242-246my bold emphasis added)

***In any reflective discussion of a man's chivalrous disposition or of the chivalrous ethos and

attitude itself, one is also soon likely to speak of a man of honor and even the matter of honor

itself and perhaps even honor's own etymological relation to honesty and even as a form of

gracious but firm forthrightness. However, today, one does not usually, or immediately, think of

Honor in Foreign Policy or of Chivalry in War. Such concepts are often enough greeted with a

pitying cynicism, if not with a scornful smile, and indeed as a delusional form of sentimentalism at 2

least that has been the case in my own experience down the years in the Military and in the Intelligence

Community, and in some strategic involvement with U.S. Foreign Affairs. But, three thoughtful men of

action and of profound scholarship have inspired me and have taught me otherwise: James Burnham;

Captain B.H. Liddell Hart; and Major Maurice Baring (the close friend of Hilaire Belloc and G.K.

Chesterton).

For example, the gifted strategic thinker (and former Trotskyite), James Burnham, had the

following historical and strategical insight to present in his 1952 book, Containment or Liberation?

An Inquiry into the Aims of United States Foreign Policy:

The American foreign policy of the anti-Nazi epoch, which has carried over to the early anti-Communist age, has another characteristic that bears on the possibility of [our] effective political warfare [i.e., especially against the Soviet Union and its allies]. The [American] policy has been conducted without honor. There are some who say that honor [much less chivalry] in politics went out with feudalism, and breathed its last when the faithless Louis XI [1423-1483] beat the chivalric Charles [the Bold, le Tmraire] of Burgundy [1433-1477]. Surely there has been a post-Renaissance honor that lasted, if with deviations, well into the 19th century, and has not wholly disappeared from the world. The recent directors of American foreign policy [as of 1952] do not seem to recognize any claims of honor....[Burnham then gives, on pages 211-213, several trenchant and recent examples of dishonor, in support of his contention, and then concludes with these summary words:] Machiavelli insisted that states are not run by prayer books, and I do not wish to pretend that a modern government in the complex modern world can act like a Don Quixote on the bright field of honor. But honor still has a place in the relations of human beings. You can buy agents, but not friends or allies or comrades; and when you buy you always risk being outbid. If the United States is to succeed in political warfare [i.e., in strategic and tactical POLWAR] against Soviet Communism, it must have friends who are firm under all circumstances, even the blackest, who are ready to go through to the end. Surely a man of honor is most likely to find such friends. If we do not ourselves honor our own words, who will honor them?1

The Military Historian and Strategist, B.H. Liddell Hart, himself a combatant in World War I,

writes these words about Grand Strategy and the Moral Factors of Warfare, constituting a sort of

supplement to James Burnham's own insights; and he presents them in one of his last books, entitled

1 James Burnham, Containment or Liberation?An Inquiry into the Aims of the United States Foreign Policy (New York: The John Day Company, 1952, 1953), pages 211 and 213italicized emphasis in the original; my bold emphasis added.

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Strategy (1967):

The term grand strategy serves to bring out the sense of policy in execution. For the role of grand strategyhigher strategyis to co-ordinate and direct all the resources of a nation, or band [coalition] of nations, towards the attainment of the political object of the warthe goal defined by fundamental policy.

Grand strategy should both calculate and develop the economic resources and man-power in order to sustain the fighting services. Also the moral resourcesfor to foster the people's willing spirit is often as important as to possess the more concrete forms of power. Grand strategy should also regulate the distribution of power between the several services, and between the services and industry. Moreover, fighting power is but one of the instruments of grand strategywhich should take account of and apply the power of financial pressure, of diplomatic pressure, of commercial pressure, and, not least of ethical pressure, to weaken the opponent's will. A good cause is a sword as well as armour. Likewise, chivalry in war can be a most effective weapon in weakening the opponent's will to resist, as well as augmenting [one's own] moral strength.

Furthermore, while the horizon of strategy is bounded by the war, grand strategy looks beyond the war to the subsequent peace. It should not only combine the various instruments, but so regulate their use so as to avoid damage [or embitterment!] to the future state of peace [an enhanced and truly just peace]for its security and prosperity. The sorry state of peace, for both sides, that has followed most wars [like WWI and WWII] can be traced to the fact that, unlike strategy, the realm of grand strategy is for the most part terra incognitastill awaiting exploration, and understanding [and application!].2

Maurice Baring's open-hearted tribute to the French General de Castelnau, whom he knew

intimately during World War I, will give us glimpses of an enduring example of chivalrous virtue, as

though the French General were himself a native of the age of chivalry. Baring's vivid tribute also

deserves our further reflections, especially in light of the desolating aftermath of World War I and the

subsequent moral deterioration in modern forms of remote and impersonal warfare. For, after much

2 B.H. Liddell Hart (1895-1970), Strategy, the second revised edition (London, England: Faber & Faber Ltd., 1967), p. 322italics in the original; my bold emphasis added. This passage concerning Grand Strategy comes from Chapter XIXThe Theory of Strategy, pp. 319-333. So much more could be quoted from this fine book, especially about Grand Strategy, and even about why grand strategy tends to coincide with morality: through having always to keep in view the ultimate goal of the efforts it is directing. (220my emphasis added) By way of contrast, he adds, strategy is the very opposite of morality, as it largely concerned with the art of deception. (220) A fuller vision of grand strategy (221) is always therefore needed.

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close experience as a British staff officer working with his French ally, Nol duard de Castelnau

(1851-1944), Baring admiringly says the following about the general's character:

General de Castelnau's name and exploits.... They will be written, and are already written in gold, in the history of France and [like King Saint Louis or like the earlier Crusader Godfrey of Bouillon] in the Gesta Dei per Francos....But it is perhaps permissible to say a word or two about his personality.

He seemed to belong to a nobler epoch than ours, to be a native of the age of chivalry, of that time when Louis IX, who is known as Saint Louis, dispensed justice under a spreading oak-tree. He had the easy familiarity, the slight play of kindly irony, the little ripple of humour, the keen glance, the foresight and forethought, that politesse du coeur, that complete remoteness from what is common, mean, base, self-seeking, which are the foundation of God's gentleman.3

With his white hair and keen eyes and distinctively chiselled granite-like features, General de

Castelnau also drew others to him. Indeed, says Baring, with his own politesse du coeur, the general

Radiated goodness and courage and cheerfulness, a salt-like sense, and a twinkling humour. And his smile went straight to your heart, and made you feel at home, comfortable, easy and happy. When one had luncheon with him and the orderly said luncheon was ready he used to say: A cheval [to horse!], Messieurs, and throughout his conversation there was always a rippling current of good-humoured , delicate and keen chaff.4

In marked contrast to what Edmund Burke had written in his classic book Reflections on the

Revolution in France (1790) as he so poignantly saw what was then growing in France i.e., the

death of the Age of Chivalry and its base replacement by the New Age of Hucksters and

Sophisters Maurice Baring saw in the vivid example and ethos of General de Castelnau himself an

inspiring exception to Burke's grim perception, inasmuch as

He [de Castelanau] was the salt of the earth, and one felt that if Burke had met him he would have torn up his dirge on the death of the Age of Chivalry, for there

3 Maurice Baring, R.F.C. H.Q.1914-1918 [Royal Flying Corps Headquarters] (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1920), p. 273. The book is 315 pages in length, and should be read and savored in its entirety.

4 Ibid.5

it [the ethos of chivalry] was alive and enjoying life and making others enjoy it.5

About how many general officers today could one say what Maurice Baring so sincerely (and

perspicaciously) expressed and felt in the presence of General de Castelnau? Especially his dignity and

grace under pressure! For, says Baring, even amidst stern combat and the pervasive loss of men, his

speech was poised and forceful and without a hint of a false tone:

To hear him talk was like reading [sic], was to breathe the atmosphere in which classic French was born, racy, natural, idiomatic, and utterly free from anything shoddy, artificial or pretentious.6

Maurice Baring was in a position to make such differentiated comments about language, because

he not only knew and spoke French very well, but possessed unmistakably himself a chivalrous heart.

It is fitting now to consider two medieval texts which reveal to us the oaths and high standards of

medieval knighthood and its formative ethos of chivalry: one text from the twelfth century and the

second one from the thirteenth century. The first example is from the Latin Policraticus of the learned

and eloquent John of Salisbury (c.1120-1180), who was a close companion of the martyr Saint Thomas

Becket (d. 1170) and who later himself, in 1176, became the Bishop of Chartres. The second example

comes from King Saint Louis of France: his letter to his eldest son (Philip), composed shortly before

the king's death in 1270, in North Africa, in Tunis. This Letter is presented in full near the end of The

Life of Saint Louis (1309), which is Jean de Joinville's memorable biography of Saint Louis and also a

Chronicle of the Seventh Crusade. Joinville (1224-1317) was a close companion of King Louis IX on

that Crusade.

We shall first examine and quote at some length two short chapters from Book VI of The

Policraticus: Chapter VIII and Chapter IX. For, according to the great medieval scholar, D.W.

Robertson, Jr., these two chapters constitute one of the most forceful statements of the ideal

underlying medieval knighthood.7

5 Ibid., p. 274.6 Ibid., pp. 273-274.7 D.W. Robertson, Jr., as the Learned Editor of The Literature of Medieval England (New York: McGraw-Hill Book

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Each of the two Chapters bears a lengthy title. The first one, Chapter VIII, is entitled That the

Soldiery [Militia] of Arms Is Necessarily Bound to Religion Like That Which Is Consecrated to

Membership in the Clergy and the Service of God; and That the Name of Soldier [Miles] Is One of

Honor and Toil. The following Chapter IX is entitled That the Faith Which is Owed to God Is to Be

Preferred before Any Man, Nor Can Man Be Served Unless God Is Served.

John of Salisbury (Old Sarum) begins his Chapter VIII, as follows:

Turn over in your minds the words of the oath itself, and you will find that the soldiery of arms not less than the spiritual soldiery [militia, chivalry] is bound by the requirements of its official duties to the sacred service and worship of God; for they owe obedience to the prince and ever watchful service to the commonwealth, loyally and according to God. Wherefore...those who are neither selected nor sworn, although they may be reckoned as soldiers in name, are in reality no more soldiers than men are priests and clerics whom the church has never called into [the sacrament of holy] orders. For the name of soldier is one of honor, as it is one of toil. And no man can take honor upon himself, but one who is called of [by] God [and thus] glories in the honor which is conferred [as a gift] on him [cf. Hebrews 5:4].8

John of Salisbury raises a question about the Christian soldier's specific scope of duties, and he

then seeks to answer that question:

But what is the office [the officium] of the duly ordained soldiery? To defend the Church, to assail infidelity, to venerate the priesthood, to protect the poor from injuries, to pacify the province, to pour out their blood for their brothers (as the formula of their oath instructs them), and, if need be, to lay down their lives....But to what end? To the end that they may serve madness, vanity, avarice, or their own private self-will? By no means. Rather to the end that they may execute the judgment that is committed to them to execute; wherein each follows not his own will but the deliberate decision of God, the angels, and men, in accordance with equity [i.e., with gracious justice] and public utility [i.e., the bonum commune]....For soldiers who do these things are saints [Psalm 149:9], and are the more loyal to their prince in proportion as they more zealously keep the faith of God; and they advance more successfully the honor of their own valor

Company, 1970), p. 215.8 Ibid., p. 214my emphasis added.

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as they seek the more faithfully in all things the glory of God.9

Professor D.W. Robertson, Jr. then immediately adds this illuminating comment at the end of this

chapter, and it deserves to be emphasized: The allegiance a knight owed to his lord was considered

to be an aspect of his allegiance to God. It was assumed that if he [the knight] were not loyal to

God, he had no reason to be loyal to anyone else.10

Chapter IX builds upon and elaborates this insight about the priority of loyalty:

This rule must be enjoined upon and fulfilled by every [loyal and duly ordained] soldier, namely, that he shall keep inviolate the faith which he owes first to God and afterwards to the prince and to the commonwealth. And greater things always take precedence over lesser, so that faith is not to be kept to the commonwealth or to the prince contrary to God, but [loyally] according to God, as the formula of the military oath itself puts it. Wherefore I marvel greatly if any prince dares to put his trust in those whom he sees not keeping their faith which they owe to their God, to whom, without mentioning other obligations, they are bound even by their military oath. Under what disease of reason must a prince [himself] be laboring who trusts that a man will show fidelity to himself who before his [the prince's] eyes reveals himself as corrupt and faithless toward Him to whom he is under the greatest of all obligations?....There is nought which the godless wretch will not stoop to do who prefers man before God. It is vain to expect one [a vassal] to be true to his secondary loyalty [the prince] who holds his primary loyalty [to God] in no regard.11

When we move now to the moral atmosphere of the thirteenth century and consider the chivalry

of the Christian King of France and not only in his earlier leadership of the unsuccessful Seventh

Crusade (1245-1254) we may especially appreciate how the chivalrous Joinville, near the end of his

own vivid Chronicle, reverently introduces Saint Louis' final Letter to His Son:

9 Ibid., p. 215my emphasis added.10 Ibid.my emphasis added.11 Ibid., p. 216my emphasis added.

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I will not attempt to describe the king's journey to Tunis [where he died], nor tell you anything that happened, becausethank God!I did not take part in it, and have no wish to to put in my book anything of which I am not absolutely certain. So I will speak only of our saintly king, and tell you how, after he had landed in Tunis, in front of the [Muslim] Castle of Carthage, he fell a victim to enteric fever....The king took to his bed, and felt that he must shortly pass out of this world into the next. He sent for his son the Prince Philippe and commanded him, as if he were making his will, to observe all the instruction he was leaving. These you can find set down in French [and also in the Vie de Saint Louis by Guillaume de Nangis, which is probably Joinville's own reliable source], as they were written, so it is said, with the king's own saintly hand.12

Here, in full, we may now see and savour the range of religious insights and the truly chivalrous

and gracious expressions of that dying saint's letter to his eldest son and successor:

My dear son, the first thing I would teach you is to set your heart to love God; for without that [love] no one can be saved. Keep yourself from anything displeasing to God, that is to say, from mortal sin. Rather than commit such a terrible offense you must on the contrary be ready to suffer every kind of torment [unto blood martyrdom].

If God sends you adversity, accept it patiently, and give thanks for it to our Savior; consider that you have deserved it, and hope that He will make it turn to your advantage. If, on the other had, God sends you prosperity, then thank Him humbly, so that you do not become worse from pride, or any other cause, when such a blessing should make you better. For we ought not to use God's gifts to fight against Him.

Go often to [sacramental] confession, and choose for confessor a wise and upright man who knows how to teach you what you ought, and what you ought not, to do. Always behave yourself in such a way that your confessor and your friends will not be afraid of reproving you when you have done wrong. Listen to the services of Holy Church reverently and devoutly, and without chattering. Pray to God with your heart as well as your lips, and most of all during Mass at the moment of the consecration. Let your heart be tender and full of pity towards the poor, the unhappy, and the afflicted; and comfort and help them to the utmost of your [own chivalrous] power.

Maintain the good customs of your realm and abolish the bad ones. Do not be greedy in your demands on your people, or impose heavy taxes on them, except in case of emergency.

If anything lies heavy on your heart speak of it to your confessor or to some

12 Jean de Joinville, The Life of Saint Louis (London: Penguin Classics Book, 1963), pp. 346-347. Joinville's Life of Saint Louis is to be found as the last section of a twofold text, Joinville and Villehardouin: Chronicles of the Crusades (New York: Penguin Classics, 1963translated by M.R. B. Shaw). King Louis IX himself led the Seventh Crusade (1245-1254) where Joinville was also a participant, and was even to become a close and respectful companion of the King.

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wise and discerning man who has not too glib a tongue. In this way your trouble will be easier to bear.

Take care to have around you people, whether clerics or laymen, who are wise, upright, and loyal, and free from covetousness. Talk with them often, but shun and fly from association with the wicked. Listen willingly to the Word of God, and keep it in your heart; be eager to obtain prayers and indulgences. Love all that is good and beneficial; hate all that is evil wherever you find it.

Let no one be so bold as to say in your presence anything that may entice and move men to sin, nor do anything so presumptuous as to speak evil of another behind his back in order to belittle him. Nor must you allow anything in disparagement of God and His saints to be said before you. Render thanks to God continually for all the good things He has given you, so that you may be considered worthy to receive further benefits.

In order to deal justly and equitably with your subjects, be straightforward and firm, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, but always following what is just, and upholding the cause of the poor till the truth be made clear . If anyone bring a suit against you, make full inquiry until you know all the truth; for then your counsellors, having the facts before them, will be able to give sentence more confidently, whether for or against you.

If through your own act, or the act of your predecessors, you hold anything which should belong to another, and his right to it is proved beyond question, restore it [make just restitution] to him without delay. If on the other hand there is some doubt about the matter, have it investigated, promptly and thoroughly, by wise and knowledgeable men.

You must give your attention to ensuring that your subjects live peaceably and uprightly under your rule. Above all, maintain the good cities and communes of your realm in the same condition and with the same privileges as they enjoyed under your predecessors. If there is anything in them that needs reform, do what is necessary to set it right; and keep them ever in your favour and your love. For because of the wealth and power of your great cities not only your own subjects, and especially your great lords and barons, but also the people of other countries will fear to undertake anything against you.

Love and honour all persons in the service of Holy Church, and see that no one takes away or diminishes the gifts and donations made to them by your predecessors. It is related of King Philip, my grandfather, that one of his councillors [sic] once said to him that the servants of Holy Church were doing him [Philip] much wrong and injury, in that they deprived him of his rights and trespassed on his authority, and that it was a great marvel that he [Philip] allowed it to be so. The good king answered that this might well be true, but after considering the benefits God had bestowed on him and His many gracious acts of kindness, he thought it better to forego some of his rights than embark on any

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dispute with the people of Holy Church.

Honour and respect your father and mother, and obey their commands. Bestow the benefices of Holy Church on persons of upright character and a clean life; and do this on the advice of good and honourable men.

Beware of undertaking a war against any Christian prince without careful deliberation; if it has to be undertaken see that you do no harm to Holy Church, or to persons who have done you no injury. In the case of wars and dissensions arising among your subjects, make peace between the disputants as soon as ever you can.

Take special care to have good bailiffs and provosts, and often inquire of them, as also of people attached to your household, how they conduct themselves, and whether any of them are addicted to the vice of excessive covetousness, or untruthfuless, or shifty behavior. Endeavor to drive out of your land all hateful and unrighteous practices, and in particular do all in your power to root our evil swearing and heresy. Take care to keep the expenses of your household within reasonable limits.

Finally, my very dear son, have Masses sung for my soul and prayers said for me throughout your kingdom; and give me a full and special share in all the good you do. My own dear child, I give you all the blessings a good father can give to his son. May the blessed Trinity and all the saints keep and defend you from all evils; and may God grant you the grace to do His will always, so that He may be honoured through you, and that you and I, after this mortal life is ended, may both be with Him together and join in praising to all eternity. Amen.13

Two more persons and their distinctive texts should now very fittingly be discussed in conclusion,

so as to disclose some other essential aspects of Chivalry, especially as they touch upon the Blessed

Mother (Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary) and the place of the Religious Military Orders (such as

the Knights Templars). We shall find that the Cistercian, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, is himself a link

between the Military Orders and the devotion to Our Lady, as it is also to be seen at the very end of

Dante's Divine Comedy. For, not only did Saint Bernard write a Rule (Regula) for the Templars which

was based upon the Cistercian Rule, but he also later wrote a hortatory tribute to them, which is entitled

De Laude Novae Militiae (In Praise of the New Chivalry).

Moreover, in Dante's Commedia, Saint Bernard himself is the last guide that Dante the Pilgrim

13 Ibid., pp. 347-349my emphasis added.11

has before he is vouchsafed a glimpse of the Beatific Vision. Just before the end of the Paradiso, we

see Saint Bernard praying for the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and we see her implicit

immediate acceptance of his prayer on behalf of Dante the Viator-Peregrinus (the Wayfarer-Pilgrim).

Then, Our Lady silently and wordlessly merely raises her eyes to Our Lord and the Vision of

Beatitude is at once granted and glimpsed by the Pilgrim Dante and the poem ends there.

Saint Bernard's own special challenge in writing De Laude Novae Militiae was how to justify an

order of chivalrous monks who were now also authorized to bear arms as part of their protective

mission to protect the innocent and the vulnerable especially in defense of those pilgrims en route

to, and while in, the Holy Land, and then during their return home. This challenging Mission is part of

the great and noble story of the courageous and truly chivalrous Military Orders, all of them, to include

the Hospitallers of Saint John (of Rhodes and Malta) and the Spanish and Portuguese Orders who

rescued Christian captives s uch as the Mercedarians (the Order of Our Lady of Mercy), founded in

1218 by Saint Peter Nolasco.

All of the above considerations about chivalry will be more fully and gratefully grasped, if one

fundamentally understands that the Vow was the Linchpin of Christendom. That is, The Vow, and

not a mere Contract. For, a Vow is, at root, a free and irreversible binding of one's own will in a

Promise to God.

There is no one I know who better conveys this indispensable understanding than G.K. Chesterton

in his The Story of The Vow, which he published in 1920, shortly before he finally entered the

Catholic Church in the summer of 1922.14

For example, in his politeness, Chesterton will first have us consider that

Chivalry is something recognisably different from the virtus of Virgil. Charity is something exceeding the pity of Homer. Even our patriotism is something more subtle than the undivided love of the city; and the change is felt in the most permanent things, such as the love of landscape or the love of woman [as towards Our Blessed Mother]. To define the differentiation in all these things will always be hopelessly difficult. But I would suggest one element in the change [from heathen things to the Christian things] which is perhaps too much neglected; which at any rate ought not to be neglected; the nature of a vow. I might express it by saying that pagan antiquity was the age of status; that Christian

14 G.K. Chesterton, The Superstition of Divorce (London: Chatto & Windus, 1920), pp. 81-101 (The Story of the Vow).12

mediaevalism was the age of vows; and that sceptical [and untrusting] modernity has been the age of contracts; or rather has tried to be, and [as of 1920] has failed.15

Later, Chesterton adds:

It [vassalage] marks at least a special stage of transition, that the form of freedom was essential to the fact of service, or even of servitude. In this way it is not coincidental that the word homage means manhood. And if there was vow instead of status even in the static parts of Feudalism, it is needless to say there was a wider luxuriance of vows in the most adventurous parts of it [Feudalism]. The whole of what we call chivalry is one great vow. Vows of chivalry varied infinitely from the most solid to the most fantastic [romantic]....As I have remarked [about the nature of a vow], this rule of loyalty, even in the unruly exceptions which proved [i.e., tested] the rule, ran through all the romances and songs of the troubadours....I mean here to emphasise the presence, and not even to settle the proportion of this new notion [i.e., the notion of the Christian vow] in the middle ages....There was a chivalry of trades [Christian guilds] as well as a chivalry of orders of knighthood....That was the vital revolt and innovation of vows...; as when a man vowed to be a monk, or the son of a cobbler saluted the shrine of St. Joseph the patron saint of carpenters. When he had entered the guild of carpenters he did indeed find himself responsible for a very real loyalty and discipline; but the whole social atmosphere surrounding his entrance was full of a sense of a separate and personal decision . There is one place where we can still feel this sentiment [as of 1920]; the sentiment of something at once free and final. We can feel it, if the service is properly understood, before and after the marriage vows in any ordinary wedding in any ordinary church.16

After Chesterton has presented his outline of the historical nature of vows of the personal

pledge, feudal or civic or monastic he goes on to unfold a little further the meaning of a Vow:

The idea, or at any rate the ideal, of the thing called a vow is fairly obvious. It is to combine the fixity that goes with finality with the self-respect that goes with freedom....But in the story of his own soul he [any man who is still alive] is still pursuing, at great peril, his own adventure....For the purpose of this part of the argument, it would not matter if the marriage vow produced the most austere

15 Ibid., pp. 86-87my emphasis added.16 Ibid., pp. 89-91, 93my emphasis added.

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discomforts of the monastic vow. The point for the present is that it [the vow] was sustained by a sense of free will; and the feeling that its evils were not [merely] accepted but chosen. The same spirit ran through all the guilds and popular arts and spontaneous social systems of the whole [Christian medieval ] civilisation. It [the civilisation of vows (96)] had all the discipline of an army; but it was an army of volunteers.17

In contrast to the ancient world and the modern world, Chesterton courteously notes: So far

history has only one way of combining that sort of stability with any sort of liberty not in a

regime of servile status nor in one primarily of mixed contract, but in a society full of varied vows.18

Moreover, from his vantage point in England in 1920, Chesterton sees that the opponents of the

irrevocable vow have a sly and self-deceived way of appearing as the true friends of freedom:

There is only one form of freedom [the freedom of habitual vice, or an actually sordid and consequent bondage] which they tolerate; and that is the sort of sexual freedom [cf. luxuria] which is covered by the legal fiction of divorce. If we ask why this liberty is alone left [but not the liberty to bind oneself!], when so many other liberties are lost, we shall find the answer in the summary of this chapter [on the Vow]. They are trying to break the vow of the knight as they broke the vow of the monk [with King Henry VIII, for example]. They [the subverters of a man's word] recognise that the vow as the vital antithesis to servile status [and to the growing Servile State, as he says elsewhere, agreeing with H. Belloc's concept]; [i.e., the vow is] the alternative and therefore the antagonist....In short, what they [the Libertines] fear, in the most literal sense, is home rule....[But] let them...ask themselves whether the oldest and simplest of the charges against [the institution of] slavery has not always been the breaking up of families [as well as the loyal bonds of their vows].19

17 Ibid., pp. 94-96my emphasis added.18 Ibid., p. 98my emphasis added.19 Ibid., pp. 99-101my emphasis added.

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So, too, today, would they have a man break his word and break his honor. And even break his

irreversible promises to God and to his beloved spouse and thus to their own vulnerable little

children.

APPENDIXWe may consider now, at the end of these varied reflections on Chivalry, an extended and worthy

passage fittingly to be further savored in full, coming from Georges Bernanos' The Diary of a Country

Priest (first published in 1936 in French; then soon in 1937 in an English translation). It is, in full, the

unexpected, but mutually enriching, and unmistakably chivalrous exchange between a humble Catholic

Priest (the Cur of Ambricourt) and a manly and still deeply reverent Soldier of the French Foreign

Legion (Monsieur Olivier):

I have just had a strange meeting [says the little Cur of Ambricourt in his Diary]....But I think I have met a friend: friendship came as a revelation....I realize now that friendship can break out between two people, with that violence which generally is only attributed to the revelation of love....I am sure you believe in God [said the Cur of Ambricourt to M. Olivier of the French Foreign Legion]. Our people, he answered, never question the matter. We all believe in God, even the worst of usthe worst believe in Him most, perhaps. I think we must be too proud to sin without taking risks; we have always one witness to face: God.Such words should have torn my heart, for it was easy to take them as blasphemous, and yet they in no way disturbed me.It's not a bad idea to face up to God, I said. It compels a man to pledge the whole of himselfthe whole of his hope, all the hope he is capable of, only sometimes God turns away his face....He [the Legionnaire] was watching me with his pale eyes....Tell me what you think of me....Oh, you? If it wasn't for that black sheath [soutane], you'd be like any one of us. I saw that at first glance.I didn't understand (I don't understand even now). You don't mean that?Yes, I do mean that. But perhaps you don't know that I serve in a foreign regiment.A foreign regiment?The Foreign Legion, if you like. I hate the word since novelists have made it so fashionable.

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But surely a priest I stammered.Priests? We've plenty of priests out there [in Algeria and the like]. My colonel's orderlyhe'd been a priest at Poitou, at one time. We only knew afterwards.After what?After he was dead, of course.....Something inexpressible was taking place in me. God knows I had never given much thought to those harsh men, to their terrible, mysterious vocation....But now the words of this stranger were awakening in me untold curiosity.There are blasphemies and blasphemies, my [Legionnaire] companion went on, in his quiet rather callous voice. In the mind of those blokes it's a method of cutting off your retreat, a way they have. It's stupid, I consider, but not foul. They're outlaws in this world, and they make themselves outlaws in the next. If God isn't going to save soldiers, just because they're soldiers, what's the good of trying? One more blasphemy for the sake of good measure, running the same risk as the other lads....He snapped his fingers. You see, it's always the same motto: All or nothing! Don't you agree? Why, I bet you yourselfMe?Well, there's a shade of difference, perhaps, butIf only you'd take a look at yourself.Look at myself?He couldn't help laughing, as we had laughed earlier on the road [together on M. Olivier's motorcycle], in the sun....The habit of prayer, as I see it [as a soldier], would mean a constant anxiety with regard to prayer, a fight, a struggle. It is that particular dread of fear, the fear of fear, that shapes the face of a brave man. Your faceyou don't mind if I tell you?looks worn by prayer; it reminds me of a very old missal....Anyway, I don't think it would take much to outlaw that face [of yours!], after our fashion [out there in the Legion!]. Besides my uncle [the cold-spirited and adulterous Count Omer at the Chteau in Ambricourt] says you have no sense of social life. You'll admit our order isn't theirs [i.e., their arid aristocratic order]?I don't deny their order, I said. I reproach it for being loveless.Our boys don't know all you do. They simply identify God with a justice they despise, because it's a justice without honour.....Look here, I said, there is such a thing as a Christian soldier...My voice was shaking as it always does when I am aware, through some unknown sign, that whatever I do my words will bring solace or offense, according to the will of God.A Knight? He smiled. Our good fathers at college used still to swear by helmets and bucklers, and we were given the Chanson de Roland to read as the French Iliad....They [Roland et al.] were well worth the fine ideal they were trying to represent. And they didn't borrow the ideal from anyone [neither

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from Greece nor from Pagan Rome]. Our peoples had chivalry in their blood. The Church merely had to bless it. Soldiers, just soldiers, that's all they were, the world has known none better. They were protectors of the City, not slaves to it....No doubt they were neither just nor pureall of thembut they did stand for a kind of justice, which for centuries and centuries has haunted the sadness of the poor, or sometimes filled their dreams....And one day it was rumoured all over the Christian world that there was going to arise a kind of [protective] police-force of the Lord Jesus. A rumour isn't much to rely on, I agree. But look: when you think of the huge uninterrupted success of a book like Don Quixote, you're bound to realize that if humankind have not yet finished being revenged, by sheer laughter, for being let down in their greatest hope, it is because that hope was cherished so long and lay so deep! Righters of wrong, hands of iron!...Those men dealt heavy blows, they forced open our [Christian] consciences with heavy blows. Even to-day women'll pay a high price [of sacrifice] to bear their names, poor soldiers' names...These soldiers belonged to Christianity alone, and Christianity belongs to no one now. There is no Christianity now. There never will be again.But why?Because there are no more soldiers. No soldiers, no Christianity. You'll say the Church has survived and that's the chief thing. Sure. But Christ's Kingdom on Earth will never be again. It's over and done with, and all hope died with us.With you? I cried. There's no lack of soldiers.Soldiers? Call 'em 'army-men.' The last real soldier died on May 30, 1431, and you killed her, you people. Not only killed her: condemned her, cut her off, burned her.We made her a saint, too.Why not say it was the will of God? And that soldier was raised so high, because she was the last. The last of such a race had to be a saint. God wished it to be a woman. Out of respect for the ancient covenant of chivalry. The old sword rests for ever across the knees that the proudest among us could not kiss without shedding tears. How I love the discreet reminder of the tournament: 'Honneur aux Dames!' Enough to make your doctors of divinity squint with spite, they who are so afraid of women.The joke would have made me laugh, for it was like many I had heard in the seminary, but I saw his eyes were sorrowful, a sorrow I knew. And such sorrow gets my soul on the raw, as it were, fills me with stupid insuperable shyness.What is your grudge against the Church? I said at last, foolishly.Mine? Oh, nothing much. You've secularized us. The first real secularization was that of the soldier. And it's some time ago now. When you go snivelling over the excesses of nationalism, you [churchmen] should remember it was you who first pandered to the law-makers of the Renaissance, whilst they made short work of Christian right, and patiently constructed under your very noses, right in

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your very faces the Pagan State: the state which knows no law but that of its own well-beingthe merciless countries full of greed and pride. Listen, I said, I don't know much about history, but it seems to me that feudal anarchy had its own risks.No doubt....[But] You [churchmen] wouldn't take them [those risks]. You left Christianity high and dry, it took too long, it cost a lot and brought in very little. You gave us the 'state' instead [i.e., Power without Grace]. The state to arm us and clothe us and feed us, and take charge of our conscience into the bargain....An the titulary gods of the modern worldwe know 'em; they dine out, they're called bankers....Outside Christianity, there is no place in the West for soldiers or fatherland, and your filthy compromises [in the Church] will soon have permitted the final shame of both [both of soldiers and of true fatherlands]....I don't give a damn, he said. I'll be killed before then.Each of his words stirred the very depths of my heart. Alas, God has entrusted Himself in our handsHis Body and Soulthe Body and Soul, the honour of God in our consecrated handsand all that those men [those legionnaires] lavish over the highways of the world....Should we even know how to die as they do? I asked myself. For one moment I hid my face, appalled to feel the tears slip between my fingers. To weep in his presence, like a child, like a woman! But our Lord restored some of my courage. I stood up, let my arms drop, and with great effortthe thought of it hurts me stillI let him see my sorrowful face, my shameful tears. He looked at me for a long time. Oh, pride is still very much alive in me! I was watching for a smile of scorn, or at least of pity on those wilful lipsI feared his pity more than his scorn.You're a good lad, he said at last. I wouldn't like any priest but you around when I was dying.And he kissed me, as children do, on both cheeks.(Georges Bernanos, The Diary of a Country Priest (New York: The Macmillan Company, 19371936 in French), pp. 233, 239-246my emphasis added.)

A Brief Outline of Additional Points for Our Further Reflection and Inquiries:

1. The Ideals of Chivalry (1100-1250), in contrast with the Stern Earlier Practices and Actual Combative Martial Reality of Chivalry, also in the protracted Crusades.

2. You cannot understand chivalry unless you have yourself learned to ride and to take good care of your horse and other things you are also so dependent upon.

3. The gradual and lengthy process of the Christianization of Warfare, at least until 1431 A.D. (hence up to the burning of Saint Joan of Arc).

4. The Essential Combination of Discipline with Culture : Culture itself as a Vital Medium and thus the further need for an Attentive Cultivation unto Slow Fruitfulness. ( Consider The Parable of

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the Sower: the relationship between the Cultivation of Soil and the Cultivation of the Soul; and consider the final Encounter in Purgatory between Dante and Beatrice and her mention of Dante's own Neglect and his Neglected Rich Soil of Talents).

5. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (1966)Theological and Anthropological Considerations; considering a foreign (or one's own) Culture as a subtle and symbolic Text; Cliffort Geertz (d. 2006).

6. Victor Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (1978)his doctrinal position, along with that of his own wife and with Mary Douglas too, as part of the Scholarly Anthropological School School of the gifted Oxford Professor, E.E. Evans-Pritchard, the British Social Anthropologist.

7. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, De Laude Novae Militiae (In Praise of the New Chivalry); the Matter of the Military Orders, to include the Templars.

8. John of Salisbury (c.1120-1180), Polycraticus, Book VI: Chapter VIII and Chapter IX (That the Faith Which Is Owed to God Is to Be Preferred before Any Man, Nor Can Man Be Served Unless God Is Served).

9. Jean de Joinville (1224-1317), The Life of Saint Louis; his full Chronicle of the Seventh Crusade.

10. An unknown Breton Priest's likely composition of The Song of Roland (La Chanson de Roland) (a late 11th-mid-12th century poem, about an epic battle against the Moslem Moors, Traitors, and Basque Tribes near Roncesvalles on the Strategic Marches of Northern Spain in 778 A.D.especially about military friendship and the death of Roland, Charlemagne's loyal knight to the end.

11. Georges Bernanos, The Diary of a Country Priest (Journal d'un cur de compagne (1936); in 1937 came the first English translation).

12. King Clovis (466-511) and Saint Clothilde (475-545)the Patron Saints of the French Foreign Legion and of the Elite French Combat Helicoptersand the rationale of the latter patronage.

13. Some of R.D. Hickson's Personal History and Formative Military Involvements: from West Point to Southeast Asia and East Asia; and to Germany once again; and to Turkey and Greece on the Eastern Flank of NATO, and the overlapping relationship with CENTO (Turkey, undivided Pakistan, and the Shah's Iran) as part of an Anti-Communist Strategy.

14. The importance of the deep Contrast of Culturesto include the deeper contrasts of various Strategic Military Cultures and their Histories.

15. China, as distinct from Japan, concerning the status and qualities of their Military Cultures.

16. Historical China: the earlier, detached and Daoist-oriented Philosophers of the Bamboo Grove (mid-3rd century A.D., during the troubled Three Kingdoms Period in view of the brief Wei Dynasty, 220-266 A.D.); a consideration of the Catholics of Asia (the Chinese) in contradistinction to the Protestants of Asia (the Japanese); the Recurrent Phenomenon of Chinese Warlordism; China's Other Strategic-Geographic Vulnerabilities; the Chinese Tradition of Military Secret Societies, such as the

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White Lotus Society and the later varieties of the Chinese Triads; the 16th-century Motto against the occupying: "Restore the Ming, Remove the Ching"the Manchu Ching (Quing) Dynasty (1644-1911).

17. Historical Japan: the Samurai and the Code of Bushido; the Japanese Martial Aesthetic and Evidence of Cruelty; and what is not present or what is, rather, missing in Bushido (e.g., the presence and influence of the Blessed Mother and the attentive protection of the Little Ones).

18. The visit to Japan and startling book about Japan written by Bernard Rudofsky (1905-1988): The Kimono Mind.

19. The Translator and Scholar, Edward Seidensticker (1921-2007) and his cultural-literary insights, also about B. Rudofsky and his rare insights about the Zen religion and culture, and the Samurai Code.

20. The Japanese Scholar, Ivan Morris and his own book, The Nobility of Failure. The meaning of Makotoa quality of Purity in the special Japanese concept of Tragedy; the inspiring Counsel Ivan Morris himself once received in Japan, and so unexpectedly so, from Yukio Mishima himself.

21. Leon Gautier, Chivalrythe implications of his book's Dedication to Cervantes; his insight that "It wasit isChivalry that saves nations!" The chivalric ethos: "Esto Vir""Do Not Lie!""Be Truthful"Be and Remain Opposed to "the insinuation" and to "the shade of untruth"; "Chivalry would have us meet the daily danger with the most luminous frankness." Let us "learn, not only how to die for the truth, but learn also...how to live in it to live in the truth]!"

22. Wolfram von Eschenbach (c.1170-c.1225), Parzivaland its importance as a Chivalric Tale from the early thirteenth century (circa 1210); it also involves the higher, sacred Quest for the Holy Grail.

23. Some of THE ENEMIES OF CHIVALRY, at least the Opponents of Christian Chivalryespecially from the otherwise tolerant Secular Enlightenment Thinkers and Authors: e.g., Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and especially his own 1779 Tale that promotes Religious Toleration, which is entitled Nathan der Weise (Nathan the Wise). However, Lessing's presentation unmistakably favours both Islam and Judaism over Christianity (especially the play's depicted Christianity of the Crusaders-Templars, in contrast to the wise and virtuous Saladin and his intermingling and chess-playing Jewish Merchants).

24. A Barrier to Chivalry: the very Character of Modern Warfare, and a further elucidating Analogy with Usury: the Attempt to Remove Risk (not to Share the Risk); Further Considerations of Modern-Postmodern Warfare's Growing Impersonality, Anonymity, and Lack of Accountability; the Subversive Diffusion of Personal Responsibility and of any Public Accountability, as such. The increasing subtlety of False-Flag Operations and their deceitfully devious, operational Technologies.

--Finis-- 2015 Robert D. Hickson

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