A New Approach to the Knighting Ritual

Abstract

The Ordene de chevalerie, a didactic poem composed in northern France by an anonymous author, perhaps around 1220, details an elaborate and richly symbolic procedure designed to make a man a knight. The Crusades provide its setting. Hugh, count of Tiberias, having been captured in battle by Saladin, is given a choice between two ways of ransoming himself: paying an exorbitant sum of money or demonstrating how knights are made after the Christian fashion. Opting for the latter, Hugh proceeds to take Saladin himself through the necessary motions, explaining the significance of each step along the way: taking a bath to wash away sin, lying on a bed signifying the heavenly rest to be earned by a knight's “chivalry,” then donning a white robe for bodily cleanliness, a scarlet cloak for the blood to be shed defending the Church, brown stockings for the earth to which every knight must return, and a white belt for chastity. Golden spurs follow, as tokens for the eagerness with which a knight is to obey God's commands, and then Saladin is girded with a two-edged sword evoking the inseparability of justice and loyalty, and the knight's duty to protect the defenseless from oppression. Hugh skips the final touch, the colée, a light blow to the neck, being unwilling to strike Saladin, his captor; but he does impress upon the sultan four knightly commandments, to wit, a prohibition against false judgments and treason, and the obligations to honor and protect women and damsels, to hear a Mass every day, if possible, and to fast every Friday.

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