The Ten Commandments of the Code of Chivalry, Pt I

Photo by Nik Shuliahin 💛💙 on Unsplash

Leon Gautier’s Chivalry: The Everyday Life of the Medieval Knight is a must-read for any student of the code. Winning lines seem to fly off Gautier’s pen in a hurry—gems like “Chivalry is the military form of the Christian profession: the knight is the Christian soldier” and “‘Fight, God is with you.’ Such, in a few words, was the whole formula of Christian courage.” It is not so much a history of the chivalry as a literary study of it: Gautier outlines the code through the chansons de geste, the songs of great deeds. He aims to show the ideals that great knights like Roland and Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar strove for.

Perhaps the most memorable part of his book is Gautier’s formulation of the Ten Commandments of the Code of Chivalry, which includes some obvious truths but also some curious ones that require some thinking over. This essay will be part I of a series examining Gautier’s commandments and what they mean for our lives. Few authors have ever loved their subject as much as he does, and all aspiring knights can learn much from him.

I. Thou shalt believe all that the Church teaches, and shalt observe all its directions

At this point, many non-Catholics might simply stop reading. Believe all that the Church teaches?! The Catholic Church?! Doesn’t the Church have a long history of scandal and corruption? Didn’t the Church betray the Templars like Tom Hanks said in that DaVinci Code movie? Didn’t Catholics wage war on the poor innocent Cathars?

I can sympathize, to a certain extent, with skeptics. My own education within the Church was vexing—not because of the whiff of scandal and corruption, but the lameness. It’s hard to express how unimpressive the whole thing was: the sheer effeminacy of it, the reduction of all Christian teaching to mere niceness and prudery and social justice, the bad imitations of bad Evangelical worship music, the conference-center style of architecture of modern churches, and so on.

Gautier understands too, and he takes pains to distinguish the faith of the knight from what one observes in the churches of his times: “The faith of these rude warriors, that faith which was so precise, had nothing namby-pamby in it: nothing dilettante or effeminate. We have not to do with the little sugar-plums of certain contemporary devotion—but with a good and frank wild-honey.”

Whatever one’s feelings on the Roman Catholic Church, then or now, the of chivalry code is an inescapably Catholic vision of what a man might become. Chivalry arises during the Middle Ages, as the Faith meets the German warrior ethos. Gautier thought this “the most important and the most sacred” of the commandments, and so put it first. Everything about chivalry follows from the knight’s faith.

I can bear witness: as I’ve delved deeper into the study of chivalry, my faith has strengthened—and as my faith has strengthened, I’ve become more chivalrous, though much work remains on both fronts. For those looking for a gateway into a more robust Catholicism, the works of Josef Pieper are incredibly helpful—particularly his books on the virtues: The Four Cardinal Virtues and Faith Hope Love. There you will find a truly bracing vision of how a Catholic is to live, the good and frank wild honey that Gautier mentioned.

II. Thou shalt defend the Church

The second commandment follows from the first. Love of the Faith necessitates that the knight fight for it—and not just metaphorically, but literally if necessary. His strength is not just a metaphor for perseverance or resilience. The knight is able to bring force to bear upon those who would assault the Church: “It was he who was looked to as the protector of the thousands of temples of the true God, of those baptismal fonts from which emanate generations of Christians, of the altars where the immortal sacrifice is renewed..."

More than a few “namby-pamby” Christians are going to recoil at this commandment, or at any thought of force. We’ve all heard since kindergarten that “Violence solves nothing!” and that “Violence is never the answer!” We’ve heard too that Jesus was a pacifist. But Jesus was not a pacifist; he was a peacemaker. The distinction matters. The Lord’s teachings are not a suicide pact—particularly when our own pacifism leaves others vulnerable.

Perhaps such faulty notions have taken hold of the Western mind because we’ve convinced ourselves that the world is not dangerous—a wishful presumption currently falling apart before our very eyes. It is certainly true that some fights should be avoided. But some cannot. Chivalry is a code for men willing and able to fight those battles that cannot be avoided.    

III. Thou shalt respect all weaknesses, and shalt constitute thyself the defender of them

What most distinguishes the chivalric knight from the pagan warriors who preceded him is his attitude toward the weak and vulnerable. The knight knows his strength is not for his own advantage; it is for the protection of God’s most vulnerable children. Chivalry thus ennobles and elevates strength.

And this solves the perennial problem of rough men, who are terribly convenient to have around when the enemy is at the gates, but less so when his services are not required. You can’t live without them, in other words, but it’s not so easy to live with them either. Strength can bring temptations toward selfishness, rapaciousness, entitlement. Who’s to stop the strong from taking whatever they want as a reward for their services? It was the genius of chivalry to save civilization from this dilemma by demanding that the knight use his strength in the service of others—and attaching honor to the performance of that task.

Gautier writes, “The knight’s mission was to defend in this world all that was defenseless, and particularly the priests and monks who serve God, women and children, widows and orphans. The origin of these precepts is not doubtful: it is entirely Christian, and there is in it no mixture of Roman, Celtic, or German elements. It is pure and without alloy.” This makes it clear how the third commandment follows directly from #1 and #2. Chivalry demands that a man have the prowess to battle down invaders but also the gentleness, courtesy, and self-control that makes a man easy to live with when the invaders have been disposed of.

To return to the contentions about the use of physical force: if Jesus told us to turn the other cheek when we are struck—which is a highly nuanced statement in need of much unpacking—he said nothing about looking away when the assailant strikes our friends, our women, our children, our neighbors, and those with no one to protect them. Woe to the man who lets those people down.