13
The Soul of Chivalry
As I have previously indicated, not only regality but traditional nobility as well was originally characterized by a spiritual element. As we did for regality, let us consider the case in which this element is not the natural but rather the acquired possession of nobility. It follows that we find a gap analogous to that which exists between initiation and investiture. Investiture corresponds to what in the West was knightly ordination and to what in other areas was the ritual initiation typical of the warrior caste; initiation (a realization of a more direct, individual, and inner nature) corresponds to heroic action in a traditional, sacral sense, which is connected to doctrines such as that of the “holy war” and of the mars triumphalis.
I will discuss the second possibility later. In this context I will only discuss the spirit and the mystery of medieval knighthood as an example of the first possibility.
To begin with, we must be aware of the difference that existed during the European Middle Ages between the feudal and knightly aristocracy. The former was connected to a land and to faithfulness (fides) to a given prince. Knighthood, instead, appeared as a superterritorial and supernational community in which its members, who were consecrated to military priesthood, no longer had a homeland and thus were bound by faithfulness not to people but, on the one hand, to an ethics that had as its fundamental values honor, truth, courage, and loyalty[1] and, on the other hand, to a spiritual authority of a universal type, which was essentially that of the Empire. Knighthood and the great knightly orders of the Christian ecumene were an essential part of the Empire, since they represented the political and military counterpart of what the clergy and the monastic orders represented in the ecclesiastical order. Knighthood did not necessarily have a hereditary character: it was possible to become a knight as long as the person wishing to become one performed feats that could demonstrate both his heroic contempt for attachment to life as well as the abovementioned faithfulness (in both senses of the term). In the older versions of knightly ordination, a knight was ordained by another knight without the intervention of priests, almost as if in the warrior there was a force “similar to a fluid” that was capable of creating new knights by direct transmission; a witness to this practice is found in the Indo-Aryan tradition of “warriors ordaining other warriors.” Later on, a special religious rite was developed, aimed at ordaining knights.
This is not all; there is a deeper aspect of European chivalry worth mentioning. The knights dedicated their heroic deeds to a woman; this devotion assumed such extreme forms in European chivalry that we should regard them as an absurd and aberrant phenomenon, if taken literally. To avow unconditional faithfulness to a woman was one of the most recurrent themes in chivalrous groups; according to the “theology of the castles” there was little doubt that a knight who died for his “woman” shared the same promise of blessed immortality achieved by a crusader who had died to liberate the Temple. In this context, faithfulness to God and to a woman appear to coincide. According to some rituals, the neophyte knight’s “woman” had to undress him and lead him to the water, so that he could be purified before being ordained. On the other hand, the heroes of daring feats involving a “woman,” such as Tristan and Lancelot, are simultaneously knights of King Arthur committed to the quest for the Grail, and members of the same order of “heavenly knights” to which the Hyperborean “Knight of the Swan” belonged.
The truth is that behind all this there were esoteric meanings that were not disclosed to the judges of the Inquisition or to ordinary folks; thus, these meanings were often conveyed in the guise of weird customs and of erotic tales. In a number of instances what has been said about the knight’s “woman” also applies to the “woman” celebrated by the Ghibelline “Love’s Lieges,”[2] which points to a uniform and precise traditional symbolism. The woman to whom a knight swears unconditional faithfulness and to whom even a crusader consecrates himself; the woman who leads to purification, whom the knight considers his reward and who will make him immortal if he ever dies for her—that woman, as it has been documented in the case of the “Worshipers of Love” or “Love’s Lieges,” is essentially a representation of “Holy Wisdom,” or a perceived embodiment, in different degrees, of the “transcendent, divine woman” who represents the power of a transfiguring spirituality and of a life unaffected by death. This motif, in turn, is part of a complete traditional system; there is, in fact, a vast cycle of sagas and myths in which the “woman” is portrayed according to this value. The same theme runs through the stories of Hebe, a perennial youth who becomes the spouse of the hero Heracles in the Olympian domain; of Idun (whose name means “rejuvenation,” “renewal”) and of Gunnlöd, holder of the magic potion Odhaerir, who attempt in vain to attain Freya, goddess of light, who is constantly yearned for by “elemental beings”; of Brynhild, whom Odin appoints as the earthly bride of a hero who will dare go through the flickering flame surrounding her hall;[3] of the woman of the “Land of the Living” and of the “Victorious One” (Boagad) who attracts the Gaelic hero Conall Ceamach; of the Egyptian women who offer the “key of life” and the lotus of resurrection; of the Aztec Teoya-miqui who leads the fallen warriors to the “House of the Sun”; of the “well-shaped, strong, and tall-formed maidens who make the soul of the righteous go above the Kivad bridge and who place it in the presence of the heavenly gods themselves”;[4] of Ardvi Sura Anahita, “strong and holy, who proceeds from the god of light,” and of whom one asks for “the glory which belongs to the Aryan race and to the holy Zarathustra,” as well as wisdom and victory;[5] of the “bride” of Gesar, the Tibetan hero, who is an emanation of “the conquering Dolma,” not without relation to the double meaning of the Sanskrit term śakti, which means both “bride” and “power”; to the fravashi, divine women who, like the Valkyrie, are simultaneously transcendental parts of the human soul and beings who “bestow victory on those who invoke them, favors on those who love them, health on those who are ill.”[6] This theme helps us to penetrate the esoteric dimension of some of the chivalrous literature about the “woman” and her cult. In the Indo-Aryan tradition it is said:
Verily, not for love of kṣatrahood [in a material sense] is kṣatrahood dear, but for love of the soul [the principle of the Self which is “light and immortality”] kṣatrahood is dear … Kṣatrahood has deserted him who knows kṣatrahood in anything else but the Soul.[7]
The same idea may constitute the background of the particular aspect of chivalry that I have considered in this context.
It is important to note that in some cases the symbolism of the “woman” may assume a negative, “gynaecocratic” character (see chapter 27) that is different from the character related to the core of chivalry that leads to the ideal of “spiritual virility” mentioned in the previous chapter. The persistent, repeated use of feminine characters, which is typical of cycles of a heroic type, in reality means nothing else but this: even when confronting the power that may enlighten him and lead him to something more than human, the only ideal of the hero and of the knight is that active and affirmative attitude that in every normal civilization characterizes a true man as opposed to a woman. This is the “mystery” that in a more or less hidden form has shaped a part of the chivalrous medieval literature and that was familiar to the so-called Courts of Love, since it was able to confer a deeper meaning to the often debated question whether a “woman” ought to prefer a “cleric” or a “knight.”[8]
Even the odd declarations of some chivalrous codes, according to which a knight (who is believed to have a semi-priestly dignity or to be a “heavenly knight”) has the right to make other people’s women his own, including the women of his own sovereign, as long as he proves to be the strongest, and according to which the possession of a “woman” automatically derives from his victory—must be related to the meanings that I have discussed in the context of expounding the saga of the King of the Woods of Nemi, described in chapter 1.
We are entering here into an order of real experiences, and thus we must renounce the idea that these are just inoperative and abstract symbols. I must refer my readers to another work of mine, The Metaphysics of Sex,[9] where I said that the “initiatory woman” or “secret woman” could be evoked in a real woman; in this book I also explained that Eros, love, and sex were known and employed according to their real transcendent possibilities. Such possibilities were hinted at by several traditional teachings, so much so as to define a special path leading to the effective removal of the limitations of the empirical self and to the participation in higher forms of being. Existentially, the nature of the warrior was such as to present eventually a qualification for this path. I cannot, however, develop this point any further in this context.
Materialized and scattered fragments of an ancient symbolism are also found in other cases, such as the fact that the title of “knight” confers a special prestige and that the knight is in some cases so close to his horse that he shares both danger and glory with it and may become ritually demoted from his rank when he allows himself to be unsaddled. These facts may lead us beyond the merely material dimension, and may be related to other filiations of the ancient symbolism of the horse. The horse appears in the famous myths of Perseus and Bellerophon as a winged creature capable of taking to the sky, the riding of which constitutes a test for divine heroes. The symbolism becomes more evident in the Platonic myth where the outcome of the choice between the white and the black horse determines the transcendental destiny of the soul, represented by the charioteer,[10] and also in the myth of Phaethon, who was flung into the river Eridanus by his horse’s driving force as it drove the sun chariot through the sky. In its traditional association with Poseidon, the god of the fluid element: the horse played the role of a symbol of the elementary life-force; even in its relation with Mars—another equestrian god of classical antiquity—the horse was the expression of the same force, which in ancient Rome was subjected to the warrior principle. The meaning of two representations, which in this context have a particular importance, will now become clear. First, in some classical figurations the “hero-like” soul that was transfigured or made was presented as a knight or accompanied by a horse.[11] The second figuration is the so-called Kalki-avatara: according to the Indo-Aryan tradition, the force that will put an end to the “dark era” (Kali Yuga) will be embodied in the form of a white horse; it will destroy the evil people and particularly the mlecchas, who are warriors demoted in rank and disjoined from the sacred.[12] The coming of the Kalki-avatara to punish these people inaugurates the restoration of primordial spirituality. In another occasion, it would be interesting to follow the threads of these symbolical motifs from the Roman world all the way to the Middle Ages.
On a more relative and historical plane, European aristocratic chivalry enjoyed a formal institution through the rite of ordination as it was defined around the twelfth century. Following two seven-year periods in the service of a prince (from ages seven to fourteen, and then from fourteen to twenty-one), in which the youth was supposed to prove his loyalty, faithfulness, and bravery, the rite of ordination took place at a date that coincided with Easter or Pentecost,[13] thus suggesting the idea of a resurrection or of a “descent of the Spirit.” First came a period of fasting and penance, followed by a symbolic purification through a bath, so that, according to Redi, “these knights may lead a new life and follow new habits.” Secondly (at times, this came first) came the “wake in arms”: the person to be initiated spent the night in the church and prayed standing up or on his knees (sitting was strictly prohibited), so that God may help him achieve what was lacking in his preparation. Following the example of the neophytes of the ancient Mysteries, after the ritual bathing, the knight took on a white robe as a symbol of his renewed and purified nature; sometimes he even wore a black vest, reminding him of the dissolution of mortal nature, and a red garment, which alluded to the deeds he was supposed to undertake at the cost of shedding his blood.[14] Third came the priestly consecration of the arms that were laid on the altar and that concluded the rite by inducing a special spiritual influence that was supposed to sustain the “new life” of the warrior, who was now elevated to knightly dignity and turned into a member of the universal order represented by knighthood.[15] In the Middle Ages we witness a blossoming of treatises in which every weapon of the knight was portrayed as a symbol of spiritual or ethical virtues; symbols that were almost intended to remind him of these virtues in a visible way and to connect any chivalrous deed with an inner action.
It would be easy to indicate the counterpart of this in the mysticism of weapons found in other traditional civilizations. I will limit myself to the example of the Japanese warrior aristocracy, which considered the sword (katana) as a sacred object. In Japan, the making of a sword followed precise, unbreakable rules; when a blacksmith fabricated a sword, he had to wear ceremonial robes and to purify the forge. The technique for ensuring the sharpness of a blade was kept absolutely secret, and it was transmitted only from master to disciple. The blade of a sword was the symbol of the soul of the samurai[16] and the use of such a weapon was subject to precise rules; likewise, to train in its use and in the use of other weapons (such as the bow), because of their relation with Zen, could plunge a person into an initiatory dimension.
In the list of knightly virtues given by Redi, first came wisdom followed by faithfulness, liberality, and strength. According to a legend, Roland was an expert in theological science; he was portrayed engaging in a theological discussion with his enemy Ferragus, before combat. Godfrey of Buillon was called by some of his contemporaries lux monarchorum; Hugh of Tabaria, in his Ordene de Chevalrie portrayed the knight as an “armed priest,” who by virtue of his two dignities (military and priestly), has the right to enter a church and to keep the order in it with his sacred sword.[17] In the Indo-Aryan tradition we see members of the warrior aristocracy competing victoriously in wisdom with the brāhmaṇa (that is, with the representatives of the priestly caste, for example Ajataśatru vs. Gargya Balaki; Pravahana Jaivali vs. Āruṇi; Sanatkumāra vs. Nārada, etc.); becoming brāhmaṇa, or, just like other brāhmaṇa, being “those who tend to the sacred flame.”[18] This confirms the inner character of chivalry and, in a wider sense, of the warrior caste in the world of Tradition.
With the decline of chivalry, the European nobility also eventually lost the spiritual element as a reference point for its highest “faithfulness,” and thus became part of merely political organisms as in the case of the aristocracies of the national states that emerged after the collapse of the civilization of the Middle Ages. The principles of honor and of faithfulness continued to exist even when the noble was nothing but a “king’s officer”; but faithfulness is blind when it does not refer, even in a mediated way, to something beyond the human dimension. Thus the qualities that were preserved in the European nobility through heredity eventually underwent a fatal degeneration when they were no longer renewed in their original spirit; the decline of the regal spirituality was unavoidably followed by the decline of nobility itself, and by the advent of the forces found in a lower order.
I have mentioned that chivalry, both in its spirit and in its ethics, is an organic part of the empire and not of the Church. It is true that the knight almost always included in his vows the defense of the faith. This should be taken as the generic sign of a militant commitment to something superindividual, rather than a conscious profession of faith in a specific and theological sense. Just by scraping a little bit off the surface, it becomes evident that the strongest “trunks” of the sprouting of knighthood derived their “sap” from orders and movements that had the odor of heresy to the Church, to the point of being persecuted by her. Even from a traditional point of view, the doctrines of the Albigenses cannot be considered to be perfectly orthodox; however, we cannot fail to notice, especially in reference to Frederick II and to the Aragonenses, a certain connection between the Albigenses and a current of chivalry that defended the imperial ideal against the Roman Curia, and which during the Crusades ventured all the way to Jerusalem (not without a reason), which it conceived almost as the center of a higher spirituality than that which was incarnated in papal Rome.
The most characteristic case is that of the Knights Templar, ascetic warriors who gave up the pleasures of the world in order to pursue a discipline not practiced in the monasteries but on the battlefields, and who were animated by a faith consecrated more by blood and victory than by prayer. The Templars had their own secret initiation, the details of which, though they were portrayed by their accusers with blasphemous tinges, are very significant. Among other things, in a preliminary part of the ritual the candidates to the highest degree of Templar initiation were supposed to reject the symbol of the cross and to acknowledge that Christ’s doctrine did not lead to salvation. The Templars were also accused of engaging in secret dealings with the “infidels” and of celebrating wicked rites. These were just symbols, as it was declared repeatedly, though in vain, at the Templars’ trial. In all probability, this was not a case of sacrilegious impiety but of acknowledgment of the inferior character of the exoteric tradition represented by devotional Christianity, an acknowledgment that was required in order for one to be elevated to higher forms of spirituality. Generally speaking, as somebody has correctly remarked, the very name “Templars” bespeaks transcendence. “Temple” is a more august, comprehensive, and inclusive term than “church.” The temple dominates the church. Churches fall in ruins, but the temple stands as a symbol of the kinship of religions and of the perennial spirit informing them.[19]
The Grail was another characteristic reference point of chivalry.[20] The saga of the Grail closely reflects the hidden ambition of the Ghibelline knights; this saga too has hidden motifs that cannot be ascribed to the Church or to Christianity alone. Not only does the official Catholic tradition not acknowledge the Grail, but the essential elements of the saga are related to pre-Christian and even Nordic-Hyperboreari. traditions. In this context I can only remind the reader that in the most important versions of the legend, the Grail is portrayed as a stone (stone of light and “luciferian stone”) rather than as a mystical chalice; that the adventures related to the Grail, almost without exception, have a more heroic and initiatory rather than a Christian and eucharistic character; that Wolfram von Eschenbach refers to the Knights of the Grail as “Templeise”; and finally that the Templar insignia (a red cross on a white background) is found on the garment of some of the Grail knights and on the sail of the ship on which Perlesvaux (Parsifal) leaves, never to return. It is worth noting that even in the most Christianized versions of the saga one still finds extra-ecclesial references. It is said that the Grail as a bright chalice (the presence of which produces a magical animation, a foreboding, and an anticipation of a nonhuman life), following the Last Supper and Jesus’ death, was taken by angels into heaven from where it is not supposed to return until the emergence on earth of a stock of heroes capable of safeguarding it. The leader of this stock instituted an order of “perfect” or “heavenly knights,” dedicated to this purpose. The “myth” and the highest ideal of medieval chivalry was to reach the Grail in its new earthly abode and to belong to such an order, which was often identified with King Arthur’s knights of the Round Table. Considering that the Catholic Church has descended directly and without any interruptions from primitive Christianity, and considering the fact that the Christianized Grail disappeared until that time a knightly rather than priestly order was to be instituted—this obviously testifies to the emergence of a different tradition than the Catholic and apostolic one. There is more: in almost all the texts dealing with the Grail, the symbol of the “temple” (still a very priestly one) is abandoned in favor of the symbol of the court or of a regal castle, as the mysterious, inaccessible, and well-protected place in which the Grail is kept. The central theme of the “mystery” of the Grail, besides the test of mending a broken sword, consists in a regal restoration; there is the expectation of a knight who will restore the prestige of a decadent realm and who will avenge or heal a king who is either wounded, paralyzed, or in a catatonic state. Crisscrossing references connect these themes both to the imperial myth and to the very idea of a supreme, invisible, and “polar” center of the world. It is obvious that in this cycle, which was important to the medieval chivalrous world, a particular tradition was at work. This tradition had little to do with that of the dominant religion, and although it occasionally adopted some elements from Christianity, maybe it did so the better to express, or conversely, to hide itself. The Grail is truly a myth of the “regal religion” that confirms what has been said about the secret soul of chivalry.
When looking at the outer domain relative to a general view of life and of ethics, the overall scope of the formative and correcting action that Christianity underwent because of the world of chivalry must be acknowledged. Christianity could not reconcile itself with the ethos of chivalry and espouse the idea of a “holy war” other than by betraying the principles of that dualistic and escapist spirituality that characterized it over and against the traditional and classical world. Christianity had to forget Augustine’s words: “Those who can think of war and endure it without experiencing great sufferings have truly lost their sense of humanity”; the more radical expressions of Tertullian and his warning: “The Lord, by ordering Peter to put the sword back into the scabbard, has thereby disarmed soldiers”;[21] the martyrdom of saints Maximilian and Theogon, who preferred to die rather than to serve in the army; and Saint Martin’s words prior to battle: “I am a soldier of Christ; I am not allowed to draw the sword.” Christianity also had to bestow on the chivalrous principle of honor a very different understanding than what the Christian principle of love could allow for; moreover, it had to conform to a type of morality that was more heroic and pagan than evangelical. It also had to “close an eye” to expressions such as John of Salisbury’s: “The military profession, both worthy and necessary, has been instituted by God himself”; and it even had to come to see war as a possible ascetical and immortalizing path.
Moreover, it was thanks to this very deviation of the Church from the main themes of primitive Christianity that during the Middle Ages Europe came to know the last image of a world that in many aspects was of a traditional type.
Footnotes
1. Concerning the cult of truth, the knights’ oath was “In the name of God, who does not lie!” which corresponded to the Aryan cult of truth. According to this cult, Mithras was the god of all oaths and the Iranian mystical “glory” was believed to have departed from King Yima the first time he lied. In The Laws of Manu (4.237), we read: “By telling a lie, a sacrifice slips away.”
2. See J. Evola, The Yoga of Power, trans. Guido Stucco (Rochester, Vt., 1993), 205–9; and J. Evola, Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex (Rochester, Vt., 1983), 195–202.
3. This is mentioned in the Eddas: Gylfaginning. 26, 42; Havamal, 105; Sigrdifumal, 4–8. Gunnlöd, like the Hellenic Hesperides, is the. keeper of the golden fruit and of a divine potion. Sigrdifa, contrasted with Sigurd who “awakens” her, appears as a woman endowed with wisdom; she imparts to the hero the knowledge of the runes of victory. Finally we may recall in the Teutonic tradition the “wondrous woman” waiting on a mountain for “the hero who shines like the sun,” and who will live forever with her. The ring of fire around the sleeping “woman” recalls the barrier that according to the Christian myth blocked the entrance to Eden after Adam’s fall (Gen. 3:24).
4. They are the fravashi described in Vendidad, 19.30.
5. Yashna, 10.7.
6. Yasht, 12.23–24.
7. Bṛhad-āraṇyaka Upaniṣad, 2.5–6.
8. Ricolfi (Studi sui fedeli d’amore (Milan, 1933]) remarked that ”in the thirteenth century the divine intellect is usually portrayed in feminine, not masculine terms”: it is called Wisdom, knowledge, or “Our Lady Intelligence.” In some figurations the symbol of what is active was attributed to man; this expresses an ideal corresponding to the path of a “warrior” rather than that of a “cleric.”
9. See note 2 above.
10. Plato, Phaedrus, 264b.
11. This is certainly the case of the bas-reliefs of Tanagris and Tirea; in the latter the soul, wearing nothing but a regal mantle, holds the horse by the bridle; nearby there is the very significant symbol of the tree with a serpent.
12. Viṣṇu Purāṇa 4.3.24.
13. On the Easter date, which was not chosen arbitrarily by Christians, and much earlier than the times of Jesus, many populations used to celebrate the rite of the “kindling of fire”; this was an element related to several traditions of a “solar” type. Concerning the two periods of seven years in the knightly novitiate, we should recall that a similar rhythm was followed in ancient Greece (Plato, Alcibiades, 1.121e) and not without reason: according to a traditional teaching, the number seven presided over the rhythms of the development of those forces acting within man and nature.
14. These three colors, sometimes found in the symbolism of three robes, are central in the Hermetic Ars Regia since they represent the three moments of the initiatory palingenesis; the “red” corresponds to “Gold” and to the “Sun.”
15. If the term adoubler employed in the knightly ordination derives from the Anglo-Saxon dubban, “to strike” (in reference to the violent blow the consecrating person inflicted on the knight-to-be), this probably symbolizes the ritual “mortification” that the human nature of the knight had to undergo prior to sharing in the superior nature. In the secret language of the “Love’s Lieges” we find mention of “being wounded” or “hit by death” or by Love or by the vision of the “Woman.”
16. [Inazo Nitobe, Bushido: The Warrior’s Code. (Burbank, Calif., 1975), 82–87.]
17. Among the twelve palatines there was an armed priest, the bishop Turpinus. He invented the war cry: “Glory be to our nobility, Montjoie!” See also the legendary journey of King Arthur through Montjoie before he was solemnly crowned in Rome; it is highly significant that the real etymology of the word Montjoie was Mons Jovis, or Mount Olympus (this etymology was suggested to me by R. Guénon).
18. Viṣṇu Purāṇa 4.2.19.
19. Concerning the ethos of the Knights Templar, in his De laude novae militiae (chap.4), Saint Bernard wrote: “They live in pleasant fellowship in a frugal way, without getting married, begetting children or owning a thing of their own, including their will… . Usually they do not wear fancy clothes; they are covered with dust, their faces burnt by the sun, with a proud and severe look in their eyes. When preparing for battle they arm themselves with faith in the inside and with iron on the outside, without wearing adorned insignia or putting beautiful saddles on their horses. Their only decorations are their weapons which they use with bravery in the greatest dangers, without fearing the number or the strength of the enemy. They put all their trust in the Lord of Hosts, and as they fight for Him, they seek either a certain victory or a holy and honored death on the battlefield.”
20. See my work, Il mistero del Graal e l’idea imperiale ghibellina.
21. Augustine, The City of God, 19.7; Tertullian, De corona, 11.