There is no such thing as a single 'code of chivalry', this code of
conduct was clearly understood although it was never clearly
formulated. In fact, there were many such codes. Each order of knights
had its own code of conduct - qualities idealised by knighthood. In
spite of the great number and variety of codes, however, they all had
similar components, which Léon Gautier, a famous French medievalist
and, of course, a highly skilled latinist, reduced to a series of
virtues and of duties. The code he composed on the basis of a careful
examination of a great number of authentic documents is authoritative.
This is the one we have used.
The idea and ideals of a Medieval code of chivalry was publicised in
the poems, ballads, writings and literary works of Medieval authors,
as well as in the myths of Arthurian Legends and in 'The Song of Roland'.
These ideals clearly developed from two Charlemagnic sources around
the end of the eighth century. The first listed the knight's duties as
follows :
To fear God and maintain His Church
To serve the liege lord in valour and faith
To protect the weak and defenceless
To give succour to widows and orphans
To refrain from the wanton giving of offence
To live by honour and for glory
To despise pecuniary reward
To fight for the welfare of all
To obey those placed in authority
To guard the honour of fellow knights
To eschew unfairness, meanness and deceit
To keep faith
At all times to speak the truth
To persevere to the end in any enterprise begun
To respect the honour of women
Never to refuse a challenge from an equal
Never to turn the back upon a foe.
The second, The Exhortation of 800 AD, was issued by Charlemagne in
the year he was crowned Emperor.
Love God Almighty with all your heart and all your powers
Love your neighbour as yourself
Give alms to the poor as ye are able
Entertain strangers
Visit the sick
Be merciful to prisoners
Do ill to no man, nor consent unto such as do, for the receiver is as
bad as the thief
Forgive as ye hope to be forgiven
Redeem the captive
Help the oppressed
Defend the cause of the widow and orphan
Render righteous judgement
Do not consent to any wrong
Persevere not in wrath
Shun excess in eating and drinking
Be humble and kind
Serve your liege lord faithfully
Do not steal
Do not perjure yourself, nor let others do so
Envy, hatred and violence separate men from the Kingdom of God
Defend the Church and promote her cause.
Even modern eyes can see that the components of the code of chivalry
composed by Gautier are closely akin to the components listed in these
Charlemagnic texts. What modern eyes may not see, on the other hand,
is that this series of virtues is hybrid ; it contains both virtues of
a manly character (loyalty, love of fatherland, etc.) and virtues of a
feminine character (respect towards the weak, the poor, women, etc. ;
see what Evola has to say about so-called 'respect for woman', a
tendency which is peculiar to the third and to the fourth caste), two
kind of virtues which are essentially contradictory, especially when
they become 'duties'. The latter are clearly derived from evangelic
principles. It may be a duty to protect the weak - for a Christian,
but, whether he likes it or not, it was not so in the Roman world, in
Sparte, nor in the Vedic world. You will not find a single line in the
whole Roman, Greek, Vedic literature about the protection of the weak
and of the poor as a 'duty'. Who said the Roman father protected his
wife and children because he considered them as weak? Who said the
lord protected his serfs, the king his subjects, out of compassion for
their weakness and poverty? Both the Romans and the Church supplied
bread to the poor, but for completely different reasons : Roman
evergetism and Christian charity have nothing to do with each other
(see P. Veyne, 'Pain et cirque. Sociologie d'un pluralisme politique',
in which it is showed that, in some respects, Christian charity was a
subversive practice in the Roman world). As far as 'pietas' is
concerned, as noted out by Evola in 'Sfaldamento delle parole'
('L'arco e la clava', Mediterranee, 1995), "in ancient Latin, 'pietas'
belonged to the domain of sacredness, it designated the particular
relationship which the Roman had with divinities in the first place,
then with other realities connected with the world of Tradition,
including the State itself. Towards gods, it was an attitude made of
calm and worthy worship : a feeling of belonging and, at the same
time, of respect, of gratefulness, as well as of duty and of
adherence, as a development of the feeling aroused by the severe
figure of the 'pater familias' (hence the 'pietas familias'). (...)
pietas could also manifest itself in the political field : 'pietas in
patriam' meant fidelity and duty towards the State and the fatherland.
In certain cases, the word could also mean 'iustitia'. Those who do
not know 'pietas' is the unjust, almost the impious, those who do not
know where their place (...)". Needless to say that Christian piety
testifies to a weakening of the Roman 'pietas'.
A society in which the élite is led to respect and to protect the
weak, the poor, and the distressed, the weak as such, the poor as
such, the distressed as such, is already a society which looks
downwards and which is already driven by catagogic forces. Naturally,
it takes time to reach the bottom.
The European society of the XVIII th century looked like a massive
building whose framework is moth-eaten ; all there is to do to destroy
it is to touch it very lightly with one finger. The Jacobins could
never have destroyed the Ancient Regime, hadn't they found an
undermined ground, a ground undermined by influences which are foreign
to the Aryan spirit, non- and anti-Aryan influences which were
introduced - as actual values - in the West by early Christians.
Obviously, the Middle-Ages saw, maybe more than any other times has,
the fight between two different kind of antithetic forces, that is, on
one hand, what was left of Aryan, solar, manly, forces, and, on the
other hand, non- and anti-Aryan feminine forces, respectively embodied
by the Ghibellines and the Guelphes, it being understood that, in any
Aryan society, the latter were at work in lower castes and in woman,
who, as Evola rightly pointed out in 'Sintesi di dottrina della
razza', represents, within the Aryan world, values which,
intrinsically, are not of an Aryan nature. Therefore, it is not about
knowing whether the Middle Ages was or was not the Roman Empire,
whether the Roman Empire was or was not the Vedic civilisation, but
about knowing which principle, either the masculine or the feminine,
prevailed in each of these societies of Aryan origin. Even though the
masculine principle prevailed in the Middle Ages, the fact remains
that various phenomena, including courtly love, show that the feminine
principle was gaining ground, and, in concrete terms, that woman was
becoming emancipated from man. De Montherlant's appraisal of
knighthood and of courtly love is not the one of a modern, but,
precisely, the kind of appraisal Cato and other Romans could have made
of social practices such as the one which consisted in letting a woman
decide on the value of a man, of a knight. Here, sound men, whether
modern or ancient, are dealing with attitudes which border on sheer
insanity, and which testify to a feminisation of customs and of minds.
The relationship between the knight and the lady did indeed reflect
Hindu and Buddhist Tantrism, but, as we have tried to point out, it
did so only superficially, in that, in Hindu and Buddhist Tantrism,
liberation is supposed to be obtained in life, whereas, in the context
of courtly love, only the knight who fell for his lady could obtain it
; in that, in the former, the presence of a woman in flesh and blood
is part (in our previous post, we made a terrible slip of the tongue
by saying "hinder") of the initiation process, and, as a matter of
fact, ritual sexual union becomes a yogic exercise, whether, in the
latter, no sexual contact should occur between the knight and his lady
and chastity is actually a prerequisite, not to mention that to think
that any knight was aware that his 'ascesis' originated, albeit in a
degenerated form, in Tantric teachings would be simply preposterous.
To realise that the technique of chastity used in courtly love was a
distorted form of the one on which Hindu hathayoga or maithuna is
based, all there is to do is to compare the poems of troubadours and
their heavy formal and sentimental rhetoric with the precise
psycho-physiologic techniques expounded in Hinduist and Tantric texts.
As recalled by D. de Rougemont, Ibn Dawûd praised chastity for its
ability to "eternalise desire". Needless to say that a similar
attitude towards desire can only lead to a cerebral sexuality and,
beyond this, remains on the plane of samsaric existence, as should
have been clear to Evola. Besides, in Tantrism, woman is conceived of
as a principle, but this principle is experienced as a force (shakti),
not as an abstraction. To summarise the whole thing, everything
indicates a complete absence of a principle worth of the name.
Since you refer to the "Knightly devotion to Mary - hardly "flesh and
blood"", B. de Clairveaux protested in a famous letter against "this
new celebration which is unknown to the use of the Church, of which
reason does not approve, which tradition does not allow...and which
brings novelty, sister of superstition, daughter of fickleness". The
cult of Love and of idealised woman was also a novelty in the early
XIIth century. One hundred years later, Thomas Aquinas stated even
more clearly : "If Mary was born without sins, Jesus-Christ would not
have needed to redeem her". The Church, D. de Rougemont notes, could
only oppose to that cult a belief and a cult which met the same deep
desire, aroused from the collective soul. It was a matter of
'converting' this desire, while letting people been carried away with
it, only to catch it in the powerful current of orthodoxy". By its
nature, it could only oppose a feminine ideal to another feminine
ideal, thus adding fuel to the fire, making evil worse on the long
run, whereas a clearly masculine symbol would have been needed to get
to the root of the problem.
In any case, those who, from the 'House of Wisdom' in Cairo, sent
'agents' to spread 'Islam' in the broadest sense in Europe through an
emasculating poetry and music derived from themes taken from a
popularised Tantrism knew very well what they were doing In passing,
and since you refer to Hafiz, a close examination of Sufi poetry shows
that most of its motives are closely related to an idealised
celebration of love for young boys. Basically, most Arab poets were
homosexuals, and so were most troubadours. Paraphrasing Baudelaire who
rightly stated that to love intelligent women is the pleasure of a
pederast, only a pederast can idealise women.
We have just said that, by establishing the cult of the Virgin Mary,
the Church only made matters worse on the long run. All historians
agree that the ideals of courtly love were generally not followed in
the social reality of the Middle Ages, in which natural sensuality was
still pregnant and customs in general and sexual customs in particular
were still manly-oriented, despite an increasing feminisation of the
relationship between the two sexes, parallel to the increase in power
of the cult of Love in the élite and, in Southern France, to a
loosening of the feudal and patriarchal bound, to some kind of
individualist pre-Renaissance. Fortunately, the men of the Middle Ages
were not faithful for most of them to the ideals of courtly love.
There was a huge differential between the actual and the ideal in this
respect. It will however decrease gradually over generations. The Art
of Courtly Love composed by Andreas Capellanus in the XIIth century
was no longer read a few centuries later, but its spirit had gained
ground in minds, contributing to condition a new behaviour and a new
conception of the relationship between man and woman ; man conformed
more and more to feminine standards and become 'domesticated'.
Chivalry, as we have said, had three aspects, with their respective
duties : in relation to fellow Christians, to fellow country-men ; in
relation to religion ; in relation to woman. A clash was bound to
occur between some of these various duties. It is illustrated by
various literary works of the XVI th century, of which the famous
plays of the French dramatist Corneille, whose heroes are torn between
their duties towards the State - their sovereign - and love, which, in
Corneille, is closer to esteem than to passion.
What needs to be pointed out with respect to Evola's views on the
Middle Ages is that a certain misunderstanding of the true nature of
courtly love and the emphasis he put on the first aspect of chivalric
duties may have led him to overestimate the traditional content of
this medieval phenomenon. His views on the relationship and the
balance of power between 'temporal power' and 'spiritual authority'
are incomparably more accurate.
--- In
evola_as_he_is@yahoogroups.com, "Toni Ciopa" <hyperborean@...>
wrote:
>
> There is little to dispute in the realm of ideas, but some care must be
> taken in their interpretation.
>
>
>
> First of all, ideals can be compared to other ideals, but it is
illegitimate
> to compare the ideal to the actual, as if they were on the same
plane. The
> actual embodies the ideal (or principle), to a greater of lesser
degree of
> fidelity. This requires judgment – we can focus on the fidelity or
on the
> infidelity of a particular civilisation to a set of principles, but to
> understand the principles probably requires both.
>
>
>
> For example, rather than looking at the "chivalric code" (is there a
Latin
> version available?) through modern eyes, we can look through
medieval eyes.
>
>
>
> Dedication to feudal duties, not lying, begin loyal, unceasing war,
love of
> country --- there is nothing at all to dispute here.
>
> As for (1) and (2) – devotion to church teachings and its defence --
we can
> consider that to be a manifestation of the virtue of "piety", a
virtue even
> to the Romans. (As to the relative dominance of the pope and the
sovereign,
> that will have to wait for a discussion of de Maistre and Donoso
Cortes in
> relation to Evola.)
>
>
>
> As for "respect" for weakness, that is either a mistranslation or
> misunderstanding. Yet, of course it is a duty to protect the weak. What
> Roman father would fail to protect his wife and children? Wasn't it an
> obligation for the lord to protect his serfs? The King to protect his
> subjects? Did not even the Romans supply bread to the poor? Or, to
be a man,
> does it mean one should kick a beggar in the street while walking by?
> Protecting the weak maintains the proper relationship between the
strong and
> the weak and makes clear their hierarchical relationship. It was not the
> Medieval civilisation that reversed that … it was the
(pseudo)Reformers and
> Jacobins.
>
>
>
> To be generous and give largesse? This is nothing but the Roman
virtue of
> hospitas, or hospitality. To give largesse -- when it is not a duty
-- is
> magnanimity, another virtue.
>
>
>
> As mentioned, the relationship between the Knight and Lady does indeed
> reflect Hindu and Buddhist Tantrism. If it eventually assumed a
sentimental
> attitude, that is indeed unfortunate, but that does not indicate the
> complete absence of Principle … only its imperfect or incomplete
> application.
>
>
>
> It is hardly obvious that a "flesh and blood" woman was considered to be
> required for spiritual fulfilment. We can start with the Knightly
devotion
> to Mary – hardly "flesh and blood". For the Knights and troubadours,
as a
> matter of fact, a "Platonic" love was considered superior. At a time of
> arranged marriages, this sort of love was allowed, and did not manifest
> erotically. To criticise it when it did become sexual and
sentimental, is
> again to attempt to compare the actual to the ideal. In its higher
> manifestations, it remained unrequited. We need not go further than
Dante
> and Beatrice or the Persian poet Hafiz and the princess to see that
> spiritual realisation does not depend on a "flesh and blood" woman.
>
>
>
> Closer to our own time, one should track down Leopardi's "Dialogo di
> Torquato Tasso e del suo genio familiare" – if one has a sense of
humour --
> but that will take as a little far from the subject at hand.
>
>
>
> The only real objection I hear is that the Middle Age was not the Roman
> Empire, but neither was the Roman Empire the Vedic civilisation.
Both Evola
> and Guénon had high regard for Medieval Europe. In our era, which is
> absolutely devoid of virtue, it behooves us to look very carefully
at the
> most recent period in European history when an authentic
civilisation did
> manifest.
>