"What else could brave knights do?"

The Song of Roland (Penguin Classics)

Anonymous

Some days I wish I could take you all into the conversations of my family's homeschooling life together. The last few days, we have been talking about the rise and fall of Medieval Christendom from Augustine to the Reformation. So much of the Medieval church's power came from having one an argument about basic assumptions that was almost never successfully contended. How the church won that argument and how, at the height of its power, it began to lose it, is a subject worthy of a few hours of good storytelling. I think quite often it happens that once an institution, be it a family or a religion or a state gains enough power to silence arguments, it begins to lose its interest in being able to win them ... and thus, in time, it loses.

One of the questions that has interested me about this period has to do with why we find ourselves so fascinated with it. Why are so many people intrigued with this period of time and why do we keep revisiting it in our poetry, our movies, our legends, our imaginations? My son Skyler thinks that it is because the Middle Ages was a time when there was certainty about good and evil. There was meaning to one's life in that cosmic battle and there were few complexities about who was good and who was bad and which side one was on. As if the immersion in this period of  continual warfare were an antidote to modern relativism and post-modernism where every position among hundreds is right or wrong depending on the point of view of the evaluation. It is also a period of time that valued loyalty almost above all other traits and attributes. It valued loyalty even above success or survival. this is something that we seem to have a dearth of in the modern corporate world. It was a time when people believed things - and where they would die for those things in which they believed. Who among us today would do the same. who is so certain about anything that they would chose death over compromise?It was a time when people believed that great forces of good and evil fought for them or against them, making great things worth setting out to accomplish and things accomplished worth the sacrifices it took to accomplish them. It was an age that gave you blanket solutions for failure and that would sing about you if you did fail (assuming that your cause was regarded as worthy.)

Today, Skyler and I sat on the couch and read The Song of Roland together. "Goading their horse's flanks with frenzied spurs until they bleed again. So rush to death. What else could brave knights do?"

In the first part of the battle, Roland and his band of merry men win fame for their warrior traits in honor of their Norse ancestral ideas about the need for REAL men to win glory in battle. In the second part of the battle they win fame by willingly choosing martyrdom on the field of battle to retreat, thus fulfilling their duty as Christians to the manliness of self-sacrifice. The story provides both their cultural heritages with what they demand and they see no contradiction between the two. Indeed, the archbishop of Turpin comes close to displaying perfect manliness on both counts, killing many and being himself killed.

"We fight for right." Roland incites his men, "These cowards fight for wrong." and thus when the Saracens are smitten in battle, the author assures us that "Satan siezes their gibbering souls" and drags them off to hell, "the foes of God" being slain by the hundreds. All enemies are hated by God. All allies are loved. All enemies go to hell upon the moment they expire. All allies are escorted by angels "on wings of gold to escort their souls to heaven". Everything is clear. Everything is uncomplicated. Morality wears uniforms. It is no wonder we find this era fascinating. We live in a world with significant vitamin deficiencies in this respect. we all suffer from the scurvy that results from our steady diet of absolute-free relativism (though it extends our lifespans long beyond the average in the Medieval world).

Question for Comment: Has your definition of "real manliness" changed over the course of your life? Do you carry conflicting images of what sort of man should be and will be immortalized in th emamory of those who knew him?