The Chivalry Reading List, Part I

Updated and Revised

You and I have been deceived about many things. Among the most egregious examples is the reduction of the chivalric ideal to mere politeness: rather than the honor code of the Christian knight, we’ve been led to believe it’s all about nice manners and romantic gestures. This is no small problem. A sensitive young man deprived of this vision of manliness—and given something fake in its place, or nothing at all—has been spiritually robbed.

To help fix this disaster and revive a true understanding of the ideal, I offer the first in a series of reading lists—ten works to get one started.

“The Necessity of Chivalry” by CS Lewis

Lewis’ concise essay is where it all began for me. In fewer than 1400 words, he provides the clearest and most compelling explanation of chivalry I’ve yet encountered. What makes the ideal unique, he argues, is the “double demand” chivalry places on human nature. The chivalrous man is a paradox: a man of ferocity and gentleness. He is not a compromise or golden mean between the two, but both extremes in the same man—someone you’d want on your side in a fight and also a perfectly courteous guest at dinner. And this ideal is not just a “lifestyle” choice. Chivalry is a necessity, as the title proclaims—both in the 11th century and in the 21st. If we fail to cultivate and reconcile both ferocity and gentleness, "then all talk of lasting happiness or dignity in human society is pure moonshine” and we are doomed to contests between "wolves who do not understand, and sheep who cannot defend, the things which make life desirable.”

“The Necessity of Chivalry” is available in a collection of essays called Present Concerns and on audio on Youtube.

A Knight’s Own Book of Chivalry by Geoffroi de Charny

Any serious student needs to consult to the old sources, and he can do no better than the manual written by Sir Geoffroi de Charny (1306-1356), a knight of great renown and a veteran of the 100 Years’ War. Charny was pained to see his countrymen lose their way and grow soft, so he wrote his exhortation to call his fellows back to prowess and revive the fate of his country. That point is worth emphasizing: a return to chivalry starts with a return to prowess. It is an intensely physical and embodied code. A knight exists for the purpose of fighting, defending, protecting, and not just holding doors open.

For Charny, prowess is tied to honor—and his manual offers a refreshingly unironic view of this virtue, unlike the sneering deconstructions one grows accustomed to in our times. It need not be a “problematic” matter, but a simple one: a knight lives for the pursuit of honor through great deeds and upright living. “He who does more is of greater worth,” the author writes again and again in the opening pages.

Alongside this pursuit of prowess and honor, Charny also presents the knightly case for religious fanaticsm, in the best sense of the word. (It’s really a compliment, when you think about it.) Faith energizes and directs the knight’s prowess and his love of honor. And he who is right with God can fight harder. The key is Christian humility, which forces even the strongest man to remember that the virtues for which he is honored are ultimately blessings from above. “Be certain,” Charny says, “that there is no wisdom, worthiness, strength, beauty, prowess, or valor that may be found in anyone and may remain and endure save only by the grace of our Lord.”

This manual provides an answer to all the midwits and revisionists who have certain cynical theories about chivalry. Take it from the master himself, the great teacher of knights, rather than the tenured radical or the Redditor who cannot bench his bodyweight. Charny is, according to one historian, “as close to the genuine voice of knighthood as we are likely to get.”

Sword and Scimitar & Defenders of the West by Raymond Ibrahim

Ibrahim’s works are simultaneously frightening, riveting, appalling, sobering, and invigorating—and they emphasize Lewis’ point about the necessity of chivalry, especially when an existential threat bangs on your door. You’d better be ready to fight.

Sword and Scimitar and Defenders of the West ought to be read in tandem and in order. The first book dives into the larger context of the centuries of conflict between Islam and Christendom, as Muhammed’s followers swallowed up 3/4 of the formerly Christian world and sought to complete the work by conquering Europe. What became known as “the West,” Ibrahim writes, was simply “the last and most redoubtable bastion of Christendom not to be conquered by Islam […] the westernmost remnant of what was a much more extensive civilizational block that Islam permanently severed.” This book is not a comprehensive history, but instead a study of eight great battles in the larger conflict.

Excellent as Sword and Scimitar is, Defenders of the West is better still, and more personal. It’s basically Plutarch for the Middle Ages, eight biographies of tragically overlooked Christian warriors from those centuries of struggle: Godfrey of Bouillon, El Cid, Richard the Lionheart, St Fernando III, St Louis IX, John Hunyadi, Scanderbeg, and Vlad Dracula. I find it difficult to pick a favorite from these chapters, but Ibrahim’s introduction to George Castrioti Scanderbeg is among the most harrowing and moving things I’ve ever read. (I recently tried to do justice to the hero in my own essay.)

Consider yourself warned: there’s no going back once you’ve read these. Nor are these books merely records of dead history. This conflict is far from over, and now you will understand, painfully clearly, what we’re up against.

God’s Battalions by Rodney Stark

Of all the lies we’ve been told, those about the Crusades might be the most egregious and intentional. Stark sets the record straight in a very helpful and compelling introduction to the wars in the Holy Land. It’s simply not the case, as Enlightenment and longhouse propagandists would have us think, that “an expansionist, imperialistic Christendom brutalized, looted, and colonized a tolerant and peaceful Islam.” The truth is that heroic and devout and generous men undertook one of the greatest adventures in the history of the world during the First Crusade— and the Third was great too, though Richard the Lionheart didn’t quite achieve his predecessors’ glory. And if the larger effort ultimately fell short of permanently recapturing the Holy Lands, the Crusades still marked a turning point in the civilizational struggle; they were not for nothing.

Stark also has excellent chapters on the over-vaunted reputation of Islamic culture and learning, as well as the slander against the “dark age,” which was actually a time of real progress and advancement.

The Song of Roland

Certain kinds of stories produce certain kinds of men. You are shaped by the experience. Marvel movies give rise to dedicated fanboys, prestige dramas cultivate sophisticated skeptics, and so on. Medieval heroes were raised on chansons de geste—songs of great deeds—the most famous of which was The Song of Roland, the story of the treacherous Saracen ambush that destroyed the rearguard of Charlemagne’s army at Roncevaux in 778.

If you get the chance, listen to The Song of Roland on audiobook. Blackstone offers a full-cast production which brings to life the energy of the oral tradition and shows how unironic and unembarrassed the song is about its heroes and ideals. The manly frankness took me aback. From Roland’s unapologetic declaration that “Pagans are wrong and Christians in the right,” to Archbishop Turpin’s assigning “Strike hard!” as penance to the knights in their final confessions, to Charlemagne’s prayer that God would halt the sunset so that his Franks could close the gap against the Saracens and avenge Roland (a prayer which God grants!)—these heroes are built different.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Any list of chivalrous books must include Arthurian legend, and this 14th century romance is the finest the finest specimen of that genre. The action of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is set in motion by a strange visitor to Camelot during Arthur’s Christmas feast—a green giant with an axe who wants to play a deranged game. It’s in the midst of the chaos that Gawain shows himself to be the embodiment of knightly loyalty, rising to save his king from an impossible dilemma and then undertaking a quest to fulfill a promise he made as part of the Green Knight’s “Christmas jest.” Essentially this means keeping an appointment with death. The climax of this test of loyalty is something that the hero could never have been prepared for—the reader neither. For that reason, I recommend reading JRR Tolkien’s critical essay on Gawain. It changed the way I understand the poem.

This is another good one to listen to on audiobook (David Rintoul’s narration is excellent).

The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King by JRR Tolkien

One of the most important questions to be asked of any man is, “How do you respond when you encounter human greatness?” Indifference, hatred, or love—these are the three options. Contemporary democratic men tilt heavily toward the first two. We either yawn or we seek to debunk and/or undermine examples of greatness. Envy won’t let such deeds stand, especially when they show us to be inadequate by comparison.

Lord of the Rings is one of the best antidotes to these tendencies. It is a deeply chivalric work not just because all of the chivalric virtues are on display, but because it radiates and encourages a love of greatness.

Few authors of recent centuries have been as ambitious for his readers as JRR Tolkien. The man clearly wants to show us something greater than just “relatable” protagonists. Case in point—here’s the description of Pip’s first encounter with Faramir as the captain re-enters Gondor:

Pippin pressed forward as they passed under the lamp beneath the gate-arch, and when he saw the pale face of Faramir he caught his breath. It was the face of one who has been assailed by a great fear or anguish, but has mastered it and now is quiet. Proud and grave he stood for a moment as he spoke to the guard, and Pippin gazing at him saw how closely he resembled his brother Boromir – whom Pippin had liked from the first, admiring the great man’s lordly but kindly manner. Yet suddenly for Faramir his heart was strangely moved with a feeling that he had not known before. Here was one with an air of high nobility such as Aragorn at times revealed, less high perhaps, yet also less incalculable and remote: one of the Kings of Men born into a later time, but touched with the wisdom and sadness of the Elder Race. He knew now why Beregond spoke his name with love. He was a captain that men would follow, that he would follow, even under the shadow of the black wings.

Pip sees Faramir’s excellence and he instantly loves him for it—a passage for sensitive young men if ever I saw one.

Something remarkable happens to Pip in his proximity to great men like Faramir and Aragorn. He discovers a gallant streak in his own heart, and soon enough this onetime goofball is making humble but real contributions to the fight to save Middle-earth. Along the way he literally grows taller and stronger. Tolkien hopes something similar for his readers.

There’s obviously a lot more to say about LotR, but this captures one reason why I love it so.

More to Come…

Ten books should be a good start. Ten more to follow soon.