Dangerous Times, Knightly Virtues

Chivalric Virtues Revisited

St George Slaying the Dragon by Peter Paul Rubens (c 1605-1607)

If nothing else, the past few weeks have at least brought clarity about the dangers before us. Any lingering complacency after November 2024, any expectation of a political savior miraculously returning things to “normal,” has blown away with recent winds. Anarcho-tyranny is still very much with us. Case in point: you might have thought the bullet through Charlie Kirk’s throat would galvanize those who admire him and share his vision, but instead it mostly charged up the lunatics who believe open debate on campus warrants assassination, while also reminding them of the utter lack of will to put down their violence. Which will only bring more violence. And now many Establishment “conservatives” are less concerned with addressing the Spain-in-the-1930s vibes and more concerned with applying ideological purity tests to people like Tucker Carlson. All patriots owe Donald Trump real gratitude for his remarkable feat of buying us some time to get our act together before the next onslaught, but dark clouds are gathering again on the horizon and no one is coming to save us.

No specific course of action can be prescribed in such moments. Every prudent man must find the particular ways in which he can best contribute, and all those efforts will come together if they please God. We win only if we prove worthy.

This is why I love chivalry and why I call it an ideal whose time has come again. Chivalry is the way forward—not a mere historical curiosity but a timeless code for those with heroic longings inside their ribcage and the desire to prove worthy. It instructs a man on what he must become in order to meet the challenges of the times, whether in the 11th century or the 21st. Even better: it demystifies the process of becoming that kind of man by exalting the particular virtues he must strive for, and by offering the heroes and legends of the past who embodied them. The result is a man who will be of extraordinary service to those who count on him.

I hardly knew what a virtue was for most of my life. The word was rarely ever mentioned during my formative years, except ironically, as a hopelessly uptight and square and even sinister remnant of dark times. Mostly we were told to be nice, get along, go with the flow, and things would just happen as they were supposed to! No need to strive to be a certain kind of man. Simply be yourself (whatever that means). I only started to get it when I came across the knightly ideal and its obsession with manly excellence. Virtues are the particular forms of excellence, and the virtues which constitute the code of chivalry are prowess, courtesy, honor, generosity, loyalty, and faith. The man who embodies these becomes a living “work of art,” in the words of CS Lewis: “of that art which has human beings, instead of canvas or marble, for its medium.” And everything depends on these works of art. You cannot build and maintain anything without them.

Prowess, courtesy, honor, generosity, loyalty, and faith—in moments like ours it’s worth revisiting what these virtues are and what they’re good for.

Prowess

Chivalry is a deeply embodied code. Many today are too overeager to dismiss the claims of the body as somehow lower, mouthing refrains like “It’s what’s on the inside that counts,” “Never judge a book by its cover,” and so on. What’s “on the side” certainly does count—but it’s not the only thing that counts, nor is it so cleanly separable from what’s on the outside. The sentimentalists who speak in this language seek to revive the old Manichaean heresy, as though your spirit and body were separately made by rival creators and you were necessarily at war with yourself.

Chivalry offers a much more satisfying ideal of moral + physical excellence—both/and, not either/or. It’s an ideal for good men who fight, or who at least are prepared for fights and don’t back down when fights are forced upon them. If you can’t or won’t fight, you aren’t chivalrous, no matter how gentlemanly you are, no matter how many times you hold doors open for ladies or give up your seat in church. You might be gentlemanly but that’s not the same thing. Mere gentlemanliness has no force behind it, nor does it do anybody much good when bad men are at the door.

The man who aspires to knightliness trains not because he worships at the altar of aesthetics—as so many excuse-makers and gym-avoiders seem to think is the case—but simply because people are counting on him to be ready. (And also: because life is better and more things are possible when you’re firing at full capacity and expanding your capabilities.) A man’s fighting spirit is also strengthened whenever he hits the gym. Training prepares him for the metaphorical fights just as much as for the literal ones.

Courtesy

Modern chivalry is proverbially “dead” because it has been reduced to the caricature of performative manners and romantic gestures. The whole thing is pretty unconvincing because it democratizes what ought to be elite and aspirational: holding doors open is something any chump can do, while becoming more like St George is intensely difficult. And the difficulty is always the key. Spirited young men don’t want easy; they want ambitious. This means any attempt to rediscover chivalry involves demoting courtesy relative to the other virtues, so that the vision again becomes more well-rounded and dynamic.

With that said, the larger disaster before us includes degraded social life: general meh-ness, thoughtlessness, indifference, slovenliness, absence of effort, lazy informality, ferocious casualness, snark, sarcasm, narcissism, anxiety, loneliness, and more. (What’s also interesting is how this degraded social life coincides with waning physical vitality.) To be a man of courtesy is to reject this meh-ness. It’s not a matter of following specific rules of conduct but of cultivating a spirit of warm-heartedness and good cheer which brings out the best in others. The challenges ahead will force us to win others over to our side and make common cause. Courtesy is not everything, but it makes the difference.

Honor

For a long time clever people have been overly satisfied with themselves for exposing the ways that honor can become “problematic.” (See: Game of Thrones.) Skepticism has its uses, but at a certain point we must admit it’s actually good to have a culture of honor which demands that a man strive to prove himself worthy. Striving disappears in a culture of deconstruction and self-impressed irony.

The costs were on full display during the Pandemic, an almost uninterrupted exercise in personal disgrace which revealed our eagerness to comply with almost any measure that would increase our chances against a virus which mostly threatens overweight diabetics who never go outside. Don’t ever forget the tragic ridiculousness of the things we saw during those times: the laptop class masking up for Zoom calls from their own living rooms, grandparents trying to hug their grandchildren through saran wrap, the masses lining for an experimental injection from Big Pharma (while also calling for the ruin of those who didn’t comply). We even let the elderly die alone in nursing homes because experts said that’s how it had to be.

To be fair, many of those who disgrace themselves with maximal panic-on-command were lied to. But these lies had effect mostly because any sense of honor, any sense of a fate worse than death, had already faded in the heart. A national lack of honor is an invitation to tyranny. It shows our petty despots just how far you are willing to go to, and it gives them ideas. There are certain things men of honor just don’t do and certain fates they won’t let befall their country.

You also sometimes hear confused Christians suggest that honor is somehow antithetical to the Faith. Thomas Aquinas does not agree: “The things which come into man’s use are external things, and among these honor is the greatest simply, both because it is the most akin to virtue, since it is an attestation to a person’s virtue [...] and because it is offered to God and to the best; and again because, in order to obtain honor even as to avoid shame, men set aside all other things.”

Generosity

Giving money is not just about giving money. It prepares a man to give more than his money and shapes his character in the process. The chivalric texts are obsessed with this virtue: William the Marshal’s chronicler wrote that “It is in the house of largesse that nobility is nurtured.”

Generosity is at the heart of noblesse oblige, the old idea that those with wealth, power, and status ought to be good toward those with less. Powerful people set the tone, and their conduct determines whether we are building civilization or whether everyone is at war with all others. The demise of noblesse oblige in the last few centuries is to blame for the lion’s share of Western decline.

With his gifts, the generous man aims to make life better and more beautiful for others—and for himself. Dangerous times will tempt people to be more stingy, but stingy men are not capable of great acts of heroism. Our money, just like our time and talents, takes on a special power when generously given away.

Loyalty

The whole of modernity seems designed to make atomized individuals of us all. You are trained to think of yourself not as a member of a family, a descendant of ancestors, a resident of a community, or a servant of the Lord, but instead as an economic unit seeking to maximize earning potential. The corporations most people work are collective entities of non-belonging, and you enter into service only so that you can make enough money to support a level of consumption that suits you. Meanwhile epidemics of loneliness, divorce, childlessness, and more have ravaged us, as well as the secondary problems that follow from people seeking to fill the holes in their hearts. This is how a post-loyalty civilization goes.

Loyalty is a virtue for dangerous times. Even the strongest men are ultimately vulnerable on their own; even William the Marshal and El Cid were only as strong as the men who rode with them. Again, look to the case study of the Pandemic: a massive attempt to isolate us in our homes and prey on the helplessness of lonely people. Our enemies understand what’s what. They wanted us cut off from each other because our loyalty to each other is a threat to their big plans.

In the days to come, those who have built bonds of loyalty will be far more ready for whatever storms come our way. Loyalty is the currency of the future.

Faith

The challenge before us is to triumph over the forces of chaos and decline and to do our part to build the Kingdom of God in this world. Faith will guide our effort; it will help moderate our energy so that the quest to make things right doesn’t devolve into mere violence, mere blood-letting—as is always a possibility when men fight back against wickedness.

Faith finishes this collection of virtues because it ties all the others together in the Christian vision of the gentleman-protector. It is a virtue for dangerous times because it puts those dangers in perspective and connects you to the source and origin of all Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Without it, you are at high risk of losing yourself and failing the cause.

The heroes of the past—Charlemagne, Godfrey, El Cid, Richard, and company—weren’t just men of faith in a private or bare-minimum sense of the word: today they would be called genuine fanatics, and they would take it as a compliment. All men are fundamentally religious; it’s just a matter of what one worships.

Faith also helps by reminding fighters that everything is under the watch of Providence. There is no need to panic or despair; our task is simply to fight as hard as we can and strive to prove worthy. As people in grave danger about a millennia ago took to saying, Deus vult!

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Related:

In Praise of Anger

Providence & Suffering

The Ideal King & His Brave Soldiers