Give judgment for me, O God

24 March 2009

What does the Code of Chivalry have in common with the Sydney Gay Mardi Gras?

Perhaps for most people there is a question prior to this. What is the code of chivarly? Note that I have used the definite article here; I am talking about the historical Code of Chivalry, a code that strongly influenced men's behaviour in the West until the 1960s, regardless of whether they adhered to it or not. Indeed, an understanding of and a feel for the code was often a silent judge of men's behaviour. The anticipated shame of failing the code was a brake on the sort of bad behaviour men are typically given to. And I don't mean just violence and bullying. When maleness is corrupted, manifestations of that corruption are not restricted to violence. It is most pitifully manifested in the collapse of male identity. But what's the point of my raising the subject of chivalry?

The media is constantly full of the bad behaviour of men, but in recent months the incidence of mindless cowardly violence has appeared on a steep upward curve, despite constant expressions of community outrage and the calls for something to be done. Those calls are, of course, directed at the government. What can the government do? I mean, really do? For a start, they can take action that restrains and penalises the wrong-doers, which are what the calls are for in the first place.

Liberal/Left governments whose mentality is underwritten by materialist doctrine can only think in terms of external pressures. They don't believe there is an inner consciousness of permanent norms of right and wrong, norms that prescribe unambiguous moral action. Any rules an individual may have are those individual's rules and not mine! The assumptions and the basis of the Code of Chivalry are the opposite. More about that in a moment.

Liberal/Left governments and their supporters in all the major organs of our society have heard the community message, they say. The first steps should be right up their alley, you would think, given their materialist approach to moral and social problems. Indeed, they have attempted to take the appropriate external measures. Alas, on appearance those measures have had minimal success. But why the lack of success? Things seem to going from bad to worse.

One major reason for the failure to implement strong restraining and punitive measures is feminist fearfulness, prevarication and woolliness of thinking that is now an integral part of Leftist political bodies. I should make it clear that this fearfulness and woolliness of thinking is not held to be a negative quality by them. Compassion and dialogue! Clear confident judgment of the origin of the problem and resolute masculine action are the negative anxiety-causing qualities for feminists. Such action is primitive, and to be strictly avoided.

Feminists are comfortable and reinforced by pussy-footing around, talking about compassion, human rights, gender balance, positive discrimination and all the shibboleths they invoke to cause paralysis by nagging. It's far more fun to concentrate yet again on improving the Equal Opportunity Act so that the power of white men in suits can be drastically reduced, and religious organisations disqualified.

Even if the external measures somehow got over the feminist hurdle and reached some sort of effectiveness, it is certain that it will only ever be a band-aid solution. Actually, the better medical image is smoking marijuana to hide the pain of cancer. Corrupted maleness in society is analogous to the ravages of cancer in the body.

Just as emaciation, pain, and blotches on the body are manifestations of cancer, so are male violence, greed, treachery, lack of self-control, and the collapse of identity the manifestations of a radical viral change in male outlook and education that broke out fifty years ago. Impulses that had been kept in check were released by the removal of a self-directing, self-constraining moral outlook and education that had prevailed until then.

Nowhere are those inner constraints better reflected than in the Code of Chivalry. We must reach back eight hundred years for its origins and the expression of its content. Let me quote the entry on the Code of Chivalry in The Dictionary of Chivarly by Grant Uden (Kestrel Books, 1968).

 While it is difficult to find the precise rules laid down for the conduct of a knight, it is clear that a code comes to be recognised, even though, in the stern tests of day-to-day life, it was rarely faithfully lived up to; and since, as a German philosopher has said, "ideals cherished in the minds of men enter into the character of their actions", amid all the treachery, greed and cruelty there are to be found shining examples of unselfish courage, gentleness and mercy inspired by those rules that only a perfect man could keep perfectly.

Some seventy years ago, Leon Gautier, a French scholar who had devoted his life to the study of the literature of chivalry, worked out Ten Commandments governing the conduct of a knight. They required:

• Unswerving belief in the Church and obedience to her teachings.

• Willingness to defend the Church.

• Respect and pity for all weakness and a steadfastness in defending them.

• Love of country.

• Refusal to retreat before the enemy.

• Unceasing and merciless war against the infidel.

• Strict obedience to the feudal overlord, so long as those duties did not conflict with duty to God.

• Loyalty to the truth and the pledged word.

• Generosity in giving.

• Championship of the right and the good, in every place and at all times, against the forces of evil.

The picture of the true knight as a Christian soldier emerges clearly. Military glory and prowess were not enough. They must be gained and displayed in the service of the Church and of worthy ends. "It is not without reason," wrote St Bernard to the Knights of the Temple, "that the soldier of Christ carries a sword: it is for the chastisement of the wicked and for the glory of the good."

Carved in the stone of Chartres Cathedral is the knightly prayer: "Most Holy Lord, Almighty Father... thou hast permitted on earth the use of the sword to repress the malice of the wicked and defend justice... cause thy servant here before thee, by disposing his heart to goodness, never to use this sword or another to injure anyone unjustly; but let him use it always to defend the just and right."

An explanatory gloss is hardly necessary to understand these commandments. And I hardly need point out that the normal behaviour of many males today is directly contrary to them. Now it's as if it is a virtue to lie, to retreat from the enemy, to pick on the weak, to defend the wicked and wickedness, to hate your country, think only of yourself, and to do all possible to destroy Christianity and (above all) the Catholic Church. Indeed, the contrary to these rules is by and large what governs our dominant political class. As I have often commented, the class that has come to dominate Western society has turned traditional society on its head, a society that believed adherence to enduring principles and personal responsibility was the best safeguard against wrong-doing and harm to others.

Restraining and penalising measures are needed to check male violence, but they will not correct the problem. Nor will unjust ideologically skewed legislation solve the problem. Leftist governments, organisations and their supporters will talk on and on, but they are powerless to do anything about the rising incidence of sometimes spectacularly barbarous male violence in the community. While they talk about "the people", ordinary people will be the victims.

I will leave the reader to answer the opening question to this comment.

Comment: gerard@gerardcharleswilson.com