CHAPTER VI
ORDERS OF CHIVALRY AND VOWS
The ideal of courage, of honour, and of fidelity found other forms of expression, besides those of the tournament. Apart from martial sport, the orders of chivalry opened an ample field where the taste for high aristocratic culture might expand. Like the tournaments and the accolade, the orders of chivalry have their roots in the sacred rites of a very remote past. Their religious origins are pagan, only the feudal system of thought had Christianized them. Strictly speaking, the several orders of chivalry are only ramifications of the order of knighthood itself. For knighthood was a sacred brotherhood, into which admittance was effected by means of solemn rites of initiation. The more elaborate form of these rites shows a most curious blending of Christian and heathen elements: the shaving, the bath, and the vigil of arms undoubtedly go back to pre-Christian times. Those who had gone through these ceremonies were called Knights of the Bath, in distinction from those who were knighted by the simple accolade. The term afterwards gave rise to the legend of a special Order of the Bath instituted by Henry IV, and thus to the establishment of the real one by George I.
The first great orders, those of the Temple, of Saint John, and of the Teutonic Knights, born of the mutual penetration of monastic and feudal ideas, early assumed the character of great political and economic institutions. Their aim was no longer in the first place the practice of chivalry; that element, as well as their spiritual aspirations, had been more or less effaced by their political and financial importance. It was in the orders of more recent origin that the primitive conception of a club, of a game, of an aristocratic federation, reappeared. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the real importance of chivalrous orders, which were founded in great numbers, was very slight, but the aspirations professed in founding them were always those of the very highest ethical and political idealism. Philippe de Mézières, an unrivalled political dreamer, wishes to remedy all the evils of the century by a new order of chivalry, that of the Passion, which is to unite Christendom in a common effort to expel the Turks. Burgesses and labourers are to find a place in it, side by side with the nobles. The three monastic vows are to be modified for practical reasons: instead of celibacy he only requires conjugal fidelity. Mézières adds a fourth vow, unknown to preceding orders, that of individual, moral perfection, summa perfecto. He confided the task of propagating the Militia Passionis Jhesu Christi to four “messaiges de Dieu et de la chevalerie” (among whom was the celebrated Othe de Granson), who were to go to “divers lands and kingdoms to preach and to announce the aforesaid holy chivalry, like four evangelists.”
The word “order” thus still preserved much of its spiritual meaning; it alternates with “religion,” which usually designated a monastic order. We hear of the “religion” of the Golden Fleece, of a “knight of the religion of Avys.” The rules of the Golden Fleece are conceived in a truly ecclesiastical spirit; mass and obsequies occupy a large place in them; the knights are seated in choir-stalls like canons. The membership of an order of chivalry constituted a sacred and exclusive tie. The knights of the Star of John the Good are required to withdraw from every other order. Philip the Good declines the honour of the Garter, in spite of the urgency of the duke of Bedford, in order not to tie himself too closely to England. Charles the Bold, on accepting it, was accused by Louis XI of having broken the peace of Péronne, which forbade alliance with England without the king’s consent.
In spite of these serious airs, the founders of new orders had to defend themselves from the reproach of pursuing merely a vain amusement. The Golden Fleece, says the poet Michault, was instituted,
“Non point pour jeu ne pour esbatement,
Mais à la fin que soit attribuée
Loenge à Dieu trestout premièrement,
Et aux bons gloire et haulte renommée.”[1]
If the Golden Fleece eclipsed all the other orders, it is because the dukes of Burgundy placed at its disposal the resources of their enormous wealth. In their view, the order was to serve as the symbol of their power. The fleece was primarily that of Colchis; the fable of Jason was familiar to all. Jason, however, was, as an eponymous hero, not absolutely irreproachable. Had he not broken his word? There was an opening here for nasty allusions to the policy of the dukes towards France. La Ballade de Fougères of Alain Chartier is an instance:
“A Dieu et aux gens detestable
Est menterie et trahison,
Pour ce n’est point mis à la table
Des preux l’image de Jason,
Qui pour emporter la toison
De Colcos se veult parjurer.
Larrecin ne se peult celer.”[2]
It was, therefore, a very happy inspiration of the learned bishop of Chalons, chancellor of the order, to substitute for the fleece of the ram that carried Helle another, far more venerable, namely, that which Gideon spread to receive the dew of Heaven. The fleece of Gideon was one of the most striking symbols of the Annunciation. Thus the Old Testament judge more or less eclipses the pagan hero, as a patron of the order. Guillaume Fillastre, the successor of Jean Germain as chancellor of the order, discovered four more fleeces in Scripture, each of them denoting a special virtue, But this was plainly overdoing it, and, as far as we can see, was not successful. “Gedeonis signa” remained the most revered appellation of the Golden Fleece.
To describe the solemn pomp of the Golden Fleece, or of the Star, would only be adding new instances to the subject-matter of a preceding chapter. Let it suffice here to point out a single trait common to all the orders of chivalry, in which the original character of a primitive and sacred game is particularly conspicuous, namely, the technical appellations of their officials. The kings-at-arms are called Golden Fleece, - Garter. The heralds bear names of countries: Charolais, Zealand. The first of the pursuivants is called “Fusil,” after the duke’s emblem, the flint-and-steel. The names of the other pursuivants are of a romantic or moral character, as Montreal, Perseverance, or allegorical, as Humble Request, Sweet Thought, Lawful Pursuit, designations borrowed from the Romaunt of the Rose. At the feasts of the order, the pursuivants are baptized in these names by sprinkling them with wine. Nicolas Upton, a herald of Humphrey of Gloucester, has described the ceremonial of such a baptism.
The very essence of the conception of an order of chivalry appears in its knightly vows. Every order presupposes vows, but the chivalrous vow exists also outside the orders, under an individual and occasional form. Here the barbarous character, testifying that chivalry has its roots in primitive civilization, comes to the surface. We find parallels in the India of the Mahâbhârata, in ancient Palestine, and in the Iceland of the Sagas.
What remained, at the end of the Middle Ages, of the cultural value of these chivalrous vows? We find them very near akin to purely religious vows, serving to accentuate or to fix a lofty moral aspiration. We also find them supplying romantic and erotic needs and degenerating into an amusement and a theme for raillery. It is not easy to determine accurately the degree of sincerity belonging to them. We should not judge them from the impression of silliness and untruthfulness which we derive from the Vœux du Fassan, to mention the best known and most historical example. As in the case of tournaments and passages of arms, we only see the dead form of the thing: the cultural significance of the custom has disappeared with the passion animating those to whom these forms were the realization of a dream of beauty.
In the vows we find once more that mixture of asceticism and eroticism which we found underlying the idea of chivalry itself, and so clearly expressed in the tournaments. The Chevalier de la Tour Landry, in his curious book of admonition to his daughters, speaks of a strange order of amorous men and women of noble birth which existed in Poitou and elsewhere, in his youth. They called themselves Galois and Galoises, and had “very savage regulations.” In summer they dressed themselves in furs and fur-lined hoods, and lighted a fire on the hearth, whereas in winter they were only allowed to wear a simple coat without fur; neither mantles, nor hats, nor gloves. During the most severe cold they hid the hearth behind evergreen sprigs, and had only very light bed-clothes. It is not surprising that a great many members died of cold. The husband of a Galoise receiving a Galois under his roof was bound, under penalty of dishonouring himself, to give up his house and his wife to him. Here is a very primitive trait, which the author could hardly have invented, although he may have exaggerated this strange aberration in which we divine a wish to exalt love by ascetic excitement.
The savage spirit of the vows of knights manifests iteelf very clearly in Le Vœu du Héron, a poem of the fourteenth century, of little historical value, describing the feasts given at the court of Edward III at the moment when Robert d’Artois urges the king to declare war on France. The earl of Salisbury is seated at the feet of his lady. When called upon to formulate a vow, he begs her to place a finger on his right eye. Two, if necessary, she replies, and she closes his eye by placing two fingers on it. “Belle, is it well closed?” asks the knight. “Yes, certainly.” “A dont, dist de le bouche, du cuer le pensement;
Et je veu et prometh à Dieu omnipotent,
Et à sa douche mére que de beauté resplent,
Qu’il n’est jamais ouvers, pour oré, ne pour vent,
Pour mal, ne pour martire, ne pour encombrement,
Si seray dedans Franche, où il a bonne gent,
Et si aray le fu bouté entièrement
Et serai combatus à grand efforchement
Contre les gens Philype, qui tant a hardement.
… Or, aviegne qu’aviegne, car il n’est autrement.
A donc osta son doit la puchelle au cors gent,
Et li iex clos demeure, si ques virent la gent.”[3]
The literary motif is not without a real foundation. Froissart actually saw English gentlemen who had covered one eye with a piece of cloth, to redeem a pledge to use only one eye, till they should have achieved some deed of bravery in France.
The extreme of savagery is reached in the vow of the queen, which ends the series in The Vow of the Heron. She takes an oath not to give birth to the child of which she is pregnant before the king has taken her to the enemy’s country and to kill herself “with a big steel knife,” if the confinement announces itself too early.
“I shall have lost my soul and the fruit will perish.”
Le Vœu du Héron shows us the literary conception of these vows, the barbarous and primitive character they had in‘the minds of that time. Their magical element betrays itself in the part which the hair and the beard play in them, as in the case of Benedict XIII, imprisoned at Avignon, who made the very archaic vow not to have his beard shaved before he recovered his liberty.
In making a vow, people imposed some privation upon themselves as a spur to the accomplishment of the actions they were pledged to perform. Most frequently the privation concerns food. The first of the knights whom Philippe de Mézières admitted to his Chivalry of the Passion was a Pole, who during nine years had only eaten and drunk standing. Bertrand du Guesclin was dangerously prone to utter vows of this kind. He will not undress till he has taken Montcontour; he will not eat till he has effected an encounter with the English.
It goes without saying that a nobleman of the fourteenth century understood nothing of the magical meaning implied in these fasts. To us this original meaning is clear. It is equally so in the custom of wearing foot-irons as signs of a vow. As early as the eighteenth century, La Curne de Sainte Palaye remarked that the usage of the Chatti, described by Tacitus, corresponded exactly with the fashion which medieval chivalry had preserved. In 1415 Jean de Bourbon vowed, and sixteen knights and squires with him, that each Sunday during two years they would wear on the left leg foot-irons—the knights of gold, the squires of silver—till they should find sixteen adversaries ready to fight them to the death. The “adventurous knight,” Jean de Boniface, arriving at Antwerp from Sicily in 1445, wears an “emprise” of the same sort, so does Sir Loiselench in Le petit Jehan de Sainitré. The propensity to vow to perform some thing, when in danger or in violent emotion, undoubtedly always remains a powerful one. It has very deep psychological roots, and does not belong to any particular religion or civilization. Nevertheless, as a form of chivalrous culture, the vow was dying out at the end of the Middle Ages.
When, at Lille, in 1454, Philip the Good, preparing for his crusade, crowns his extravagant feasts by the celebrated Vows of the Pheasant, it is like the last manifestation of a dying usage, which has become a fantastic ornament, after having been a very serious element of earlier civilization. The old ritual, such as chivalrous tradition and romance taught it, is carefully observed. The vows are taken at the banquet; the guests swear by the pheasant served up, one “bluffing” the other, just as the old Norsemen vied with each other in fool-hardy vows sworn in drunkenness by the boar served up. There are pious vows, made to God and to the Holy Virgin, to the ladies and to the bird, and others in which the Deity is not mentioned. They contain always the same privations of food or of comfort: not to sleep in a bed on Saturday, not to take animal food on Friday, etc. One act of asceticism is heaped upon another: one nobleman promises to wear no armour, to drink no wine one day in every week, not to sleep in a bed, not to sit down to meals, to wear the hair-shirt. The method of accomplishing the vowed exploit is minutely specified and registered.
Are we to take all this seriously? The actors of the play pretend to do so. In connection with the vow of Philippe Pot to fight with his right arm bare, the duke, as though he feared real danger for his favourite, orders this addition to the registered promise: “It is not the pleasure of my very redoubted lord, that Messire Philippe Pot undertakes, in his company, the holy votive journey with his arm bare; but he desires that he shall travel with him well and sufficiently armed, as beseems.” Αs regards the vow of the duke himself, to fight the Great Turk with his own hand, it provokes general emotion. Among the vows there are conditional ones, betraying the intention of escaping, jn-case of danger, by a pretext. There are those resembling a fillipeen. And in fact this game, still in fashion some forty years ago, may be regarded as a pale survival of the chivalrous vow.
Yet a vein of mocking pleasantry runs through the superficial pomp. At the Vow of the Heron, Jean de Beaumont takes an oath to serve the lord from whom he may expect the greatest liberality. At those of the Pheasant, Jennet de Rebreviettes swears that unless he wins the favour of his lady before the expedition, he will marry, on his return from the East, the first lady or girl possessing twenty thousand gold pieces, “if she be willing.” Yet this same Rebreviettes, in spite of his cynicism, set out as a “poor squire,” seeking adventures in the wars against the Moors of Granada.
Thus a blasé aristocracy laughs at its own ideal. After having adorned its dream of heroism with all the resources of fantasy, art and wealth, it bethinks itself that life is not so fine, after all—and smiles.
- ↑ Not for amusement, nor for recreation, But for the purpose that praise shall be given To God, in the first place, And glory and high renown to the good.
- ↑ To God and to men detestable Is lying and treason, For this reason the image of Jason Is not placed in the gallery of worthies. Who, to carry off the fleece Of Colchos, was willing to commit perjury, Larceny cannot remain hidden.
- ↑ Well then, he said by the mouth the thought of the heart; And I vow and I promise to Almighty God, And to his sweet mother of resplendent beauty, That it will never be opened, for storm nor for wind, By evil, nor by torture, nor by hindrance, Until I shall be in France, where there are good people, And until I shall have lighted the fire And I shall have battled with great exertion Against the people of Philip who is so hardy…. Now come what may, for it is not otherwise. Then the gentle girl took away her finger And the eye remained shut, as people saw.