CS Lewis pointed out that the critical thing about chivalry was “the double demand it makes on human nature. The knight is a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and the ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs; he is also a demure, almost a maidenlike, guest in hall, a gentle, modest, unobtrusive man. He is not a compromise or happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth.” This was not the ideal of what Lewis calls “heroism by nature,” the heroism exemplified by Achilles who “knows nothing of the demand that the brave should also be the modest and merciful. He kills men as they cry for quarter or takes them prisoner to kill them at leisure.” The knightly ideal “brought together two things which have no natural tendency to gravitate towards one another.”
Peter Leithart
Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute. He is the author of numerous books on theology, literature, and culture, including Theopolitan, Defending Constantine, and Baptized Body.
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