NOVAE MILITIAE

I had promised a few words about this.

First of all, a disclaimer: I don't mean to suggest the Middle Ages were superior to modern times in all respects.  There are certain things about that era that I detest, and certain things about the modern era that I laud.  With conservatives such as Kirk, I am comfortable with the idea of "change," provided that it is not radical and almost imperceptible, and I rather prefer many of the things that have changed since then.  If I were a soldier fighting a battle with a small arm, for instance, I would prefer the rifle to the sword. (Not very chivalrous, that.)  I appreciate the fact that modern medical science is better able to cure ills than was the science of that day.  And lastly, there is a sense in which Christian chivalric attitudes about seeking the well-being of our fellow humans is more perfectly realized, albeit sometimes to a fault, in modern times than it was in medieval times.

That being said, I will now say, along with C.S. Lewis, that I am a "dinosaur."

So why my emphases on chivalry and the use of symbols of the Crusades and of a Christian state?  Regarding chivalry first of all, because chivalric culture is a prominent feature of he high Christian culture our faith naturally produced.  Chivalry set itself against the sexual license and predation of the "popular" culture of the day, as Terrence Moore notes in his article, A Return to Chivalry? :

Chivalry took root, slowly, as the response to one of the gravest crises in the history of the West: the total collapse of civilization after the fall of the Roman Empire in the Fifth Century A. D. and again after the collapse of the more precarious Carolingian Empire in the Ninth Century. True Hobbesians should spend some time with the early Middle Ages, for truly there has never been a period when life was as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." There was no government. There was no police force. Property and persons were utterly at the mercy of very bad men. These men might be called "young," partly because of their age and partly because of their youthful energy and disrespect for any older, established order. Young men on horseback roamed the countryside in huge packs and pillaged whatever semblance of civilization they found: families, churches, farms, markets. Like all young men, they came around to the idea of finding young women. Having no respect for decency, their method was simple. They just took any women they might come across. They took widows, wives, daughters, and nuns, from any place they might find them. Young men had no notion of courtship. Their desire for the opposite sex expressed itself in venereal hooliganism. In short, the behavior of young men during the Dark Ages did not differ considerably from that found in the inner-city gangs of today.

The solution to this crisis came through a gradual change in the motives and manners of the armed horsemen. Established men, the Church, and young ladies themselves combined forces to tame the unruly passions of these violent predators. They did so by effecting a direct exchange of male freedom for duty. To become true knights, young men had to submit themselves to an elaborate set of regulations known as chivalry that brought them into the social order and established them in marriage to young, beautiful heiresses. To enter the ranks of knighthood, young men had to submit themselves to a thorough regime of ethical training that prepared them for a life of service. The element of danger and enterprise remained in their lives since they had to protect their land and their ladies. The idea of male honor came into being. It became dishonorable for a strong man to intimidate or injure someone physically weaker than himself. The ritual par excellence for the display of chivalry became the tournament. No other event allowed the young knight to shine in combat before the eyes of anxious maidens and discerning parents so much as this great pageant of courage and courtesy. The tournament was not simply a game or a sport. The virtues and martial skills developed in the lists prepared young men for encounters against enemies at home and abroad in these lawless times. The deference paid to ladies guaranteed that manly strength would never be employed against the fair sex but rather in its defense.

At this point in the discussion, the teacher should drive home his point. The women are still silently sympathetic to the plight of women in the Middle Ages and perhaps realize that modern manners are reverting to early medieval conditions. The men are wishing they could become knights. The teacher should ask the men, "In the course of your education have you ever been taught what it means to be a man?" The question will floor them. Immediately they sense the need for such an ethical education and its total absence in the schools, the culture, and too often in the home. The fact of the matter is that young males today do not have the slightest idea of what it means to be men. And yet the desire of young men to be something more than irresponsible boys or even "nice persons" remains as strong as ever, despite the efforts of radical feminists, androgynists, and hyper-egalitarians. The evidence comes from a most unlikely source. Christina Hoff Sommers in The War Against Boys aptly draws our attention to a wonderful collection of essays called Between Mothers and Sons. The authors are left-leaning, pacifistic, feminist, and very much children of the sixties. Yet these mothers discover in their sons something they did not inculcate: the male nature. One such mother, Janet Burroway, describes how she nervously came to terms with her son's adventures in the military, conservative political ideas, and fascination with weaponry. She saw the sewing lessons she gave to her son in hopes of turning out a little feminist "put to use on cartridge belts and camouflage." In short, even many of the feminist mothers of today are finding themselves in the position of Perceval's mother who had never let her son see a knight since "if the knights told him of their way of life he would wish to be one also." Yet on first seeing knights pass through the forest, Perceval knew he must become one. When his mother realized "her caresses availed no longer to keep him" she supported Perceval in his decision:

Fair son, I wish to teach you a lesson which you will do well to hear, and if it pleases you to remember it, great profit can come to you. You will soon become a knight, my son, if it please God, and I approve it. If, near or far, you find a lady who needs help, or a maiden in distress, do not withhold your aid if they ask for it; for in this all honor lies. He who does not yield honor to ladies, loses his own honor. Serve ladies and maidens, and you will receive honor everywhere. If you ask a favor of any, avoid offending her and do nothing to displease her. He who wins a kiss from a maiden receives much; if she permits you to kiss her, I forbid you to take more if, for my sake, you are willing to forego it. . . . Fair son, speak with noble men and go with them; a noble man never gives bad counsel to those who frequent his company. Above everything I beseech you to enter church and minster and pray Our Lord to give you honor in this world and grant you so to act that you may come to a good end.

Perceval's mother learned that she could not deny her son's nature. The attempts to deny the male nature today have proven harmful both to men and women. For the history of chivalry has taught us that the young male can become gentle, provided that he is allowed to do so on his own terms, provided that gentleness does not reflect pusillanimity but allies itself with strength and honor.

Once the male students realize that what is at stake in this discussion is nothing less than their own manhood, and once the females begin to see what men could become, this distant epoch from the past will become a source of living instruction. The moral teacher must throw down the gauntlet. Currently, there is a great cultural battle being waged on every street corner, and in every school, and in every family in this country. It is the battle for common decency. On many fronts, the battle is being lost, but the tide has perhaps turned. The fact that the children of the sixties generation could even be interested in a theme like chivalry is a great sign of hope. But more than being interested, they must act upon the moral principles of their nature. Just as Churchill said that World War II would be won by the unknown soldier, so the battle for common decency will not be won by one great thinker or statesman or teacher. It will be won by millions of ordinary men and women doing their duties as ordinary men and women. The return to chivalry requires that every young man exercise his courage in becoming a gentleman and that every young woman exercise her modesty in becoming a lady.

What is this but the Christian stress upon Christlike and courteous behavior of men and women, the restoration of right relations between men and women, the grace-filled font from which a gracious culture would flow? 

A chivalric man is at once a man of peace and a man of war.  A man of peace because he seeks the well-being, not only of ladies, but of his fellow man.  A man of war because he takes the battle to his enemies, external and internal, corporeal and incorporeal.  He is ever vigilant against the passions, not only his own but those of his implacable enemies who war against his fellows, his women, and his society.

I hasten to add that not all Christian men are meant to be warriors in the worldy sense.  Monastics are not warriors in the manner of the world, but spiritual warriors they most certainly are.  And for those who are not monastics, it must be noted that there is a time not to take up arms, but instead submit to the way of martyrdom.  The determination whether or not to resist evil with force of arms is always a difficult one, and requires the clear leading of the Holy Spirit, which is normally (but not always) made known through the Church's hierarchy.  For instance, as historian James Cunningham notes, at the beginning of the Bolshevik revolution, the formation of militia to counter the Bolshevik revoultionaries was seriously considered by the people and their pro-Czarist leaders.  But the Sobor, headed by Tikhon, urged against it,  recommending instead "public demonstrations of faith through Processions and other manifestations of mass piety . . . in the hope of deterring Bolshevik excesses and shaming Orthodox believers from supporting them."  Despite repeated attempts to effect a change of mind, St. Tikhon did not budge from his stance, something we will have to attribute to the providence of God.  If he had decided otherwise, a force of civilian freedom fighters in the form of militia may have dwarfed the White Army whose resistance proved to be futile. 

Nevertheless, as the author of Ecclesiastes wrote, there is "a time for war," and Orthodox peoples have taken up arms against tyrants, the most recent case being that of Romania.  The Christian man must be willing to fight and die, if need be, as a soldier.  Thus was the chivalrous man of medieval times.   But if he is to be a soldier, he is called to be a gentleman in all respects: compassionate, merciful, kind, respectful, peaceable, quiet, and ascetic.  Thus also was the chivalrous man.  Does anyone not see the fruit of the Holy Spirit in these knightly qualities?

The wars we fight today are somewhat different than those fought by our medieval forebears, but much remains the same.  We are to be extremely vigilant against our own passions, but just as vigilant against the passions of the enemy, these days (just to pick a few examples) those who make and distribute pornography, which degrades women to the utmost, or those who would seek to destroy our society with their mindless, decadent "art,", or those who seek to kill our fellows, our future, still in the womb, or those who would seek to impose an alien, fatalistic and repressive religion upon the West.   And this is why I've adopted the Crusader imagery, for the Crusaders fought not just the external enemy, Islam, but also several corrupting enemies within Europe itself.  In the Middle Ages it was the fight against the Islamic imperialists and the Albigensians.  The fight is very much the same today, except that liberal secularism has taken the place of of the Albigensians and that the manner of our warfare is different.  Medieval Christians fought to preserve their society; we fight to regain it.

And so, those images of Christian sovereignty are not meant merely to bring to wistful remembrance the Christendom of the past, but to arouse hope for a Christendom of the future.  Therefore, I have adopted these things -- Christian chivalry, the imagery of the Crusades, and the insignia of temporal Christian rule, because these things serve well, now as then, to symbolize "the pulling down of strongholds, and casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ."

Christus Victor.  Christus Rex.  Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered.  That is the prayer of the simple Orthodox Christian.  But it is also the prayer of knights, both those who war in the manner of the flesh and those who war in the manner of the Spirit.