Diana's notes

im studying stuff about the arthurian cycle/chivalry and decided that the best way to keep track of sources, themes and so on was using tumblr's tag system pls dont judge me

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Book of Chivalry, deeds

Im finally past the historical introduction (which was a fantastic 50% of the book) and so now we're actually listening to the Charny man. Here are some notes for now:

He starts by listing kinds of prowess, and actions by which knights may achieve honour. There are, of course, jousts and tournaments and war, in that order, as expected, and there seems to be a polite attempt at pushing people past the first two and towards the third, which suggests that people would, in fact, stay happy with jousting and tourneying.

He also goes into travels and pilgrimages, which was interesting. Some knights do decide to travel to faraway lands, and bring information from there, and they are usually accused of lying, but Charney says to believe them, since they went and we did not, and so they know more than we do. Must find info on pilgrimages and the sort of stories brought. He also mentions that those trips were often done in normal clothing (like merchants), and not in the full suit of war, and so he discourages too much traveling.

There is also an interesting discussion on knights who do prowess for rewards (material rewards, that is, since they do expect rewards in terms of honour), those who spend a lot of money to adventure, those who come from poverty, those who cannot live their regions and so maybe dont find much adventure, and those who focus on pillaging. Quick read, any summary would be longer than just rereading. Also, he says what one expects him to say.

Something that is also interesting is the constant repetition of the sentence "He who does best is most worthy". In this section, he is actually criticising many people, powerful people, but always does it in a positive tone, by saying "this thing you're doing (pillaging, just jousting, whatever) is, of course, good and worthy and all, as all feats of arms are, but there is better things you can do, and I'm telling you which ones, and listen, I'm not gonna tell you to do them, I'm not gonna tell you to stop doing other things, but I will repeat this again and again: he who does best is most worthy". It's very interesting.

A very remarkable thing that I really want to keep in mind: he does give a lot of praise to poor knights, and seems to even put them, implicitly, in a higher position than rich knights. However, he then goes on to explicitely say the opposite:

If it is thus true that greater account is taken of some, the others are not to be valued less because of this, for there is good in all those who perform great deeds. Nevertheless, the great lords may be given higher praise [...] than their impoverished fighting companions who are sometimes worth as much or more than some great lords. But the reason is that when a great nobleman, lord of extensive lands, is of great worth in the way explained above, as a result he loves and values men of worth all the more for the knowledge he has of the great deeds he has seen them perform. And the other companions, who see that good warriors are honored by the great lords for their prowess, become more determined to attain this level of prowess [...] for the great lord has them in their company and loves, honors and values them and rewards them

Some things to mention here. First, it seems extremely easy to make medieval/antique mechsploit. Like, INSANELY easy.

Second of all, there's an interesting difference between being worthy and being given praise. Even if they are less worthy, he argues, great lords should be more praised, to give them a higher status, and so give their rewards more value.

It is helpful here to split the great lord figure in two, call them king and knight. As a knight, he is no different, but as a king he occupies a very special role. Think of arthur. Few stories actually involve him doing stuff. Instead, he is seen on a high chair by the table, surrounded by his knights, and the knights trip over themselves to show themselves worthy. Take Owain, take Gawain, possibly the grail cycle (havent gotten to that one yet). It's arguably the role in which he is most interesting, as a mythical, god-father figure and again the way in which mechsploit is just there waiting to be explicited.

As a last note: im still annoyed by his insistence on rewards and honour and praise, and by the absolute amorality of the guy besides (simplifying here) preserving the statues quo. But it's fine, I just want a skeleton to build around, and its true that honourability, for instance, is an empty word that can be filled in any way, and may imply, say, giving up arms or refusing violence. Idk.

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Notes on the lady of the fountain (in Mabinogion)

So I really liked this story, partly because it's an extremely needed break from the macho jock praise of violence of Charney, so that was nice.

The thing that I loved most was the first structure: knights eat around Arthur's table and, to entertain each other, tell stories of their adventures. In this sense, I liked the start in a third person that immediately gave way to a first person story, which (to modern eyes) seemed like it would be a great way to actually tell immense lies. The fact that everything described was the biggest and the bestest and the most wonderful did really make me hope that it would be in fact a lie, or at least unconfirmed, but the other knights going (back in the third person) to relive the adventure and see that everything was EVEN BIGGER AND BETTERER AND MORE WONDERFUL than they thought had a certain charm as well.

So yeah, definitely gonna steal this framing. I think it wasnt present in Malory, and maybe sort of mentioned in the green knight, but it's true that it works great.

The use of whale bones as noble materials, on par with gold, was also interesting, and the words in which the imprisoned damsel described Owain were also hard-hitting, even if entirely unmerited.

Also this definitely had the prechirstian weirdness I was looking for. Sure, go there, under that tree, and there you will find a slate of marbre and a bowl of water, and if you pour the water on the slate there will be thunder and rain and hail strong enough to pierce skin and muscle and bones, so you will need to hide behind your horse and your shield to survive. This is great this is fantastic I love it 10/10 want more. But sadly I must go back to Jock Charney

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Knights and Piety

Source: introduction to Book of Chivalry, by Kaeuper

In his book, Charny shows some interesting differences between his view of religion and spirituality and that of the clergy.

The first one, and in my eyes the most easily excusable, is refusing to see the clergy as a complete authority. He disagrees with them often: for instance, in the matter of tournaments:

Clerics had for centuries denounced this mock warfare as unchristian. They had even denied burial in sanctified ground to knights killed in the rough sport.

It is interesting that in these disagreements Charny does not seem to actually blame religion, but rather the clergy. Indeed, he was a pietous man, first recorded owner of the shroud of Turin, keeping correspondance with the Vatican, and insisting on having priests praying for him and his family. All of these hardly seem like a disguise or like a guy who goes to church on sundays and thats it. Rather,

He is certain that there can be no contradiction between a worthy knightly vocation and religion. This point is worth emphasizing, for piety and chivalry do not occupate separate spaces in his consciousness. For Charny, piety and chivalry form inseparable, almost interchangeable qualities in men of war.

It may seem strange that something that (generally) took one to warring and violence and killing and so on would be interchangeable with something that (generally) took one to a life of seclusion and contemplation, but one must remember here that medieval christian people were not nutter fans of Simone Weil like myself. Rather, for them, life had a clear, true reward, which was heaven, and one acted in such a way that they would be deserving of that reward. The goal was the same, but they disagreed on methods: Charny was convinced that one of the ways into heaven was displays of prowess, glory in combat, honour and so on.

In particular, it is interesting to see that he had his own view of christian duality.

The religious contrast of body and soul is paralleled by the knightly contrast of worldly possesions or worldly comfort and of all-important honour.

While they are indeed parallel, it is worth noting that the lines are very distant.

Likewise, he appropriated the concept of righteous suffering and martyrdom. Besides being probably an actual spiritual belief of his, it is clearly something very useful to write in a book to teach knights: they would undoubtedly have horrible nights, be wounded, be sick, hit by arrows and spears, or even killed in battle. By Charny's time, french knights were often complaining and fleeing such situations for understandable reasons, but this insistence on piety and religion, so understood, would make them better and more enduring.

When writing this I first wrote "make them better at killing" because I cant stress enough how much I dislike this guy and what he stands for, but I was too hasty. There are layers, like in ogres, so Im gonna write on that a bit. The first layer, which is obvious to everyone but myself when I see red, is that this does not necessarily only apply to killing. This endurance is necessary in many actions and quests, and a knight who really really prefers thei bed and their clean dry clothes would be miserable, inneffective, and might defect. They would definitely not reach the Grail, for example.

A second layer, however, is that a knight with this mindset is still a mercenary, just for a higher salary. A knight who acts this way for heaven or whatever is still being bought. This mindset, in particular, is fully against some of the themes I want to explore with chivalry stories, namely, Doctor Who's "without hope, without witness, without reward", or Ten's regeneration. However, they are not so distant. Some bridges might be drawn via the use of Weil's religion, on the one hand, and the abstract notion of duty for duty's sake (especially if the duty is not to the king, but to some higher thing that its supposed to represent). A knight agonizing with this mindset is much more interesting than one that thinks they're gonna be in Valhalla in like five minutes. Bonus if combined with the mindset of "well, I chose this willingly" or Leguin's quote about anarchism.

END OF THE DIGRESSION.

One last point of divergence between Charny and the clergy is in the matter of chastity. He is against casual sex, but he does think having a lady to impress helps in prowess. It must be carried discretely, though.

Despite this, in the making-a-knight ceremony he kept the placing of a white belt representing virginity. However this seems to be purely tradition at this point.

In this disagreement, the romance writers sided once again with the clergy. In the vulgate/lancelog-grail cycle, Perceval is praised for his virginity, and is told that without it he would have

"forfeited [his] primacy among the companions of the quest, [just like] Lancelot of the Lake, who through lusts [...] let slip long since the prospects of attaining what all the rest now strive for"

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Notes on the debates on the Knights Ethos

Source: A Book of Chivalry, introduction by Richard W Kaeuper

"The ethos of the laymen who held the swords was of much concern [...]. Clerics, intellectuals, and eventually knights themselves [...] wanted to fit the highly necessary but potentially disruptive force represented by the knights into their ideal view of society"

Bernard de Clairvaux heavily criticised knighthood ("or rather knavery, as I should call it"):

(source: on grace and free choice: praise of the new knighthood).

However, Bernard was also a huge fan of the templars, the "new knighthood" from the title: "ceaseless wages a twofold war against flesh and blood and against a spiritual army of evil in the heavens".

The problems of both violence and the crusades are two themes that should not be avoided in stories, but rather tackled head on. In particular, having a class capable of immense violence. To be contrasted with: les croisades vues par les arabes.

Chretien de Troyes is also discussed here:

As for the Vulgate Cycle, or the Lancelot-Grail, it, too, can be seen in this light:

There were other lines of criticism. By Charny's time, the knightery in France was in dire need of reformation. Many critics accused them of cowardice, immorality and greed, but also of corruption. A critic, the carmelite friar Jean de Venette, wrote that "officials were being enriched, the king impoverished. Money was contributed to many nobles and knights that they may aid and defend their land and kingdom, but it was all spent for the useless practices of pleasure, such as dice and other unseemly games". He also accused them of dressing slutty with form-fitting clothes. To this he added their fashion to "adorn themselves from head to foot with gems and precious stones"

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Notes on Geoffroi de Charny's life

Source: A Book of Chivalry, introduction by Richard W. Kaeuper

First recorded owner of the shroud of Turin

Spent quite some time being captured, and apparently the capture itself was comfortable. An exception was being mocked by the English king

But to be fair the mockery was for the (arguably quite unhonourable) attempt at taking back Calais via bribe. The knight himself was ashamed by the mockery, from which one might argue that the dishonourable behaviour was recognized.

He was a portaestandarte (oriflamme), and as such he was violently attacked during his last fight, more than a usual knight would be. He died with the oriflamme in hand

One of the founders of the Ordre de L'Etoile

He wrote three books surrounding that. One of them, Book of Chivalry, describes the "code" of knighthood as he sees it. Another one was a list of questions on war and jousting with no answers, arguably to be discussed among the knights. The third was unfinished.

By "write", it seems very likely that one means "dictated to a scribe". Im really not sure how much editing went into the process, and by whom.