Quixote does, at least at some points, display an awareness of his moral responsibility as a Christian. When Sancho asserts that "even if all I was good for was my firm, fast, truthful belief in God and all the holy teachings of the Sacred Roman Catholic Church...all historians ought to be merciful and treat me well whenever they write anything" (Cervantes 399), Quixote responds with a list of stories in which the desire for fame motivated legendary behavior and then goes on with a lecture almost worthy of a Grail knight:

Thus, oh Sancho! whatever we do must not cross the boundaries set for us by the Christian religion, to which we adhere. By killing giants, we must also kill pride; so too we must kill jealousy with kindness and generosity, anger with tranquil actions and peace of mind, gluttony and laziness with abstinence and careful attention to duty; lechery and lewdness with devoted loyalty to those we have made mistress of our thoughts; and sloth by journeying all over the globe, seeking opportunities to act and then acting, not just as Christians, but as famous and worthy knights.

His enumeration of the seven deadly sins and their remedies is eminently suitable for a Christian knight. It also, however, gives a good indication of his priorities. The remedy for lechery is not a religious action, but loyalty to "those we have made mistress of our thoughts" - a popular point in defense of courtly love and one of Cappellanus' twelve chief rules of love. Likewise, in searching out adventures the standard of action is to be not only Christians, but 'famous and worthy knights' - reminiscent of the priorities of many of the less successful Grail knights. Neither of these points is enough in itself to condemn Don Quixote as a pagan; not even both together are that serious. They do, however, indicate that the balance of his priorities is swayed not by his service to God, out of which the other duties of service spring, but out of his desire for glory.

Again, this distinction is not a hard and fast one. Quixote, like most Arthurian knights, sees his knighthood as a divine calling: "Knighthood too is a religion; there are saintly knights among the angels" (Cervantes 402). He does not maintain this distinction with any degree of consistency, however; most of his references to the duties of knighthood see knighthood as its own source, not as a divine obligation. Miguel de Unamuno, Quixote's greatest defender, sees it in just this way, declaring "quixotism...a new religion," founded by a fictional character who "was ridiculous, the fair game and laughingstock of the world," and who thus has the power to oppose the tyranny of mundane reason whose weapon is ridicule (Unamuno 12). This interpretation, however, relies on an understanding of Don Quixote foreign to both Cervantes and to Quixote himself. Cervantes saw Quixote as an imitator of chivalric romantic heroes, whose professed purpose, at least, was to "shatter the authority of all those tales of chivalry, and their influence on people, especially common people" (Cervantes 11). Quixote saw himself as a member of the brotherhood of knights errant, riding out and doing God's justice in the world. Unamuno admires "how Don Quixote merged his faith in God and his faith in himself into one, when he told the Princess that she would soon be restored to her kingdom and be seated on the throne of her ancient and mighty state" (Unamuno 121). The phrase sounds unobjectionable in context, but Unamuno's larger understanding of Quixote as the 'prophet of quixotism' is incompatible with Quixote's understanding of himself and the world he was trying to restore.

Don Quixote's endeavor, understood from his point of view, is a noble one: to restore to the world the ideals of chivalry, of extravagant action in defense of the right and of self-sacrificing determination to assist the weak. Unfortunately, his means of pursuing this goal renders him incapable of ever attaining it, since he never manages to recognize the reality of the situations he finds himself in and thus cannot help but act madly in his attempts to rectify them. As a result, his high ideals go unheard. At the end of his life he does begin to act in a manner that more corresponds with his situation and his profession of faith. He promises his niece and housekeeper that he will "never stop doing for you whatever needs to be done," and keeps his promise; he also begins "employing all the proper Christian terminology" (Cervantes 742) in other situations than knightly adventures. Thus it may be concluded that at the end of his life, when he is physically prevented from doing the deeds he thought of as knightly, Don Quixote, alias Alonso Quijano the Good, begins to understand the essence of knighthood and order his life around it. But his sudden death prevents him from expounding on his new insights, if he has any, and his story ends with a questioning of the worldview of the books of chivalry, but with no answers.

The Knights of the Round Table, Lancelot in particular, had to confront the question of what it means to be a knight in a milieu where a mistake could mean anything from a loss of honor to the destruction of the kingdom they had worked so hard to build. With the guidance of the traditional three duties, to king, to lady, and to God, they came to various answers, influenced to various degrees by the appearance of the Grail. But, living in a world where knighthood was a firmly established social institution, they never had to examine the possibility of knighthood apart from social routines and duties. As a result, they shed little light on the problem of knighthood's essential attributes as separated from the social order. Don Quixote did have to confront a growing conflict between ideal knighthood and social mores, but, lacking a firm grip on either ideals or society, he could only point out the conflict, and die trying to resolve it. Other literary knights either follow or corrupt these two types; such variations shed no more light on the problem than the originals do. The realm of literature, then, can provide a portrait of the knight, but not an analysis; it can lay out his attributes, but not locate the essential appeal that ensures his survival beyond the world that developed those attributes. Thus it becomes necessary to turn to the other realm of the ideal, religion, in search of the element that makes the knight a continuingly powerful ideal.

The realms of religion and literature are by no means entirely separated; the one informs and is supported by the other in myriad ways. The influence of Christianity in the development of the miles sancti Petri has already been seen, as have the faith and religious actions of various literary knights. Neither of these elements, though, is sufficient to isolate the elusive appeal of knighthood. For this it is necessary to turn, not to doctrine, which studies the ideal in philosophical terms, but to those heroic individuals whose lives most closely correspond to their literary counterparts: the milites Christi, the knights of Christ.

The first prominent figures in this category appeared even before the parallel milites sancti Petri. Martyrs or ascetics, they were commended for fighting the good fight, and it was largely their influence that brought their counterparts in the world to fight at their side. But though the term miles Christi was applied to them, they did not operate in a specifically knightly matrix. That development came only after the social ideal of knighthood, previously informed by religion, grew strong enough to return the favor. The first bearers of this favor were knights themselves, or aspired to be until the divine calling changed their minds. Such a man, and such a knight, was St. Francis of Assisi.

Francis was "born directly into this age and world of minstrelsy with its songs and music. Knighthood in all its forms and with all its heroic figures wooed his romantic soul" (Felder 15). His family, while not noble, was wealthy and had ties to the nobility, which put him on a level with many of the sons of nobles and made him a candidate for knighthood (Felder 16). From his mother he inherited "the fear of God and a love of purity, generosity, and true nobility of soul" (Felder 19). He was not, however, either knight or saint from birth. He was raised in a world of increasing luxury and relative ease of life, with a character that seemed to suit him to continue the family business in good style. Like Don Quixote, he admired chivalry and aspired to knighthood, and suffered for it. "Everything in this squire is of a chivalrous character...From the crown of his head to the sole of his feet he was wholly a nobleman, to whom was lacking only the formal elevation to knighthood" (Felder 31).

Francis, then, had a clear understanding of the trials as well as the benefits of social knighthood, having experienced both. He was familiar with the troubadours' romantic chivalry and had distinguished himself in war and in captivity, necessities for a true knight. He expected, not unreasonably, to continue on in this pattern, following the path from squire to knight, going off to assist in foreign wars, or to the Crusades. The illness contracted during his imprisonment was a setback, but a minor one; his ideals had not changed (Felder 33). They continued unchanged until he became convinced, through the agency of a dream, "that he was called by God to a wholly different kind of knighthood than the one of which he had dreamed" (Felder 38).

This new vocation was still unmistakably knighthood; Francis was too deeply steeped in his dreams to give them up, and such a sacrifice was never asked of him. "To his vision the Gospel presented itself primarily as a divine romance in which was set forth that law and liberty of the personal spirit which secular chivalry aspired to but even at its best only imperfectly achieved" (Cuthbert 20). He followed implicitly the traditional three duties, although in a context in which they had not been previously seen. His king was Christ Crucified, who had spoken to him and made him his liege man: "In the well-known language of chivalry the behest given by the Crucified [to rebuild His Church] meant definitely that he was enrolled among the liege men ('ministerials'), among that class of free noblemen who spent their days at court and in the palace of the king as honor guards" (Felder 48). His labor in rebuilding the churches was a chivalric task laid on him by his lord, so he worked at it in the spirit of a chivalric hero. His preaching was the heralding of his lord's coming. Finally, he was not left to serve alone: like Arthur, Francis' lord king wished to form an order of knights for His particular service. Francis was the instrument of that order, drawing men first from his neighbors and friends, then from his countrymen, and finally from the world to serve as knights of the king.

The service of these knights was very much in the pattern of the service of medieval knights gathered around a feudal lord. Unlike Don Quixote, Francis did not operate in a vacuum; he had not only a king, but an earthly hierarchy to which he owed his service and submission. Thus, when enough brothers had assembled to form the beginnings of an order, Francis went to Rome. "Until then the men of Assisi had spoken to the people only brief though stirring exhortations to do penance and to amend their lives...It had been a purely lay apostolate, such as could be exercised without formal authorization on the part of the church" (Felder 81). Now, though, "blessed Francis exercised the office of preaching in the fuller and wider sense; for he was now a preacher strengthened by apostolic authority" (Felder 81). Before, Francis had served his king as a loyal individual; now, he became a minister of the king's justice, commanding His people to return to their duties and serve their king. As Lancelot was a pillar of Arthur's kingdom until his sinfulness brought him down, Francis became a pillar of God's kingdom, almost literally, according to the vision of Innocent III of "a man who supported the church of the Lateran with his shoulders" (Felder 80). Francis and his brothers wandered the kingdom, recalling the knights errant of earlier times. Those earlier knights had relied on their lord's favors and the providence of God; these did likewise. Francis had dreamed of winning glory in the Crusades; now he fought one, sometimes against the enemy directly, more often on the battlefield of the souls that came under his care. And not only was he victorious, he won great worship for his lord by doing so.

In the second requirement of knightly duty, service to lady, Francis was equally successful. His early dreams had included a wealthy, noble and beautiful bride who would await him on his triumphant return from battle. His later life brought him exactly that - but a bride who was the exact opposite of his expectations. Francis of Assisi's lady is "Lady Poverty herself - gaunt, pale, clothed in rags, yet," in a painting of their wedding ceremony, "imaginatively suggesting a disguised enchantress. A mass of thorns is placed at her feet and two small street urchins are taunting her...But behind her, silhouetting her hexagonal halo, is a flowering bush of roses." She is attended by the ladies Chastity and Obedience, and angels look on as Christ himself weds her to a young monk, Francis (Erikson 71).

In this area too, Francis was wholehearted in service. "Did not the great ladies presiding over tournaments throw to their knights their scarves and the sleeves of their fine garments to wear in jousting? So with an equal loyalty would the friars wear ragged, patched habits in their knightly enterprises for Lady Poverty's sake. Was she homeless and a beggar? So would they be in order to be worthy of her company" (Erikson 75). Francis took joy in his lady's presence and, once he had truly come to serve her, was proud of her favors. He insisted that the brothers who serve her do so extravagantly, from the heart, not merely out of convention. In his view, "poverty should be only the outward and dramatic expression of true humility - the heartfelt lowliness of the 'poor in spirit.' One had to be married to Poverty in the world of things and in that of ideas. Through obedience one must learn to surrender personal preferences, intellectual conceptions, and the proud separate sense of selfhood and ownership - the love especially of reputation" (Erikson 78). Thus, in the best knightly tradition, Lady Poverty spurred her knights on to the betterment of their character and the better service of their king. There was no danger of being led by love of this lady to betray the king; to betray Him would be to betray her as well, and Francis was constantly on the watch against this danger, as vigilant as Don Quixote protecting his Dulcinea, and with more success. Francis succeeded not only in devoting his life to his lady, but in spreading her praises throughout the world.

In the third area of knightly duty, service to God, little needs to be said of Francis. His other services, to king and to lady, were just as surely services to God - a unity of purpose that the medieval knight often aspired to and rarely achieved. His gifts of preaching, of contemplative prayer, of poverty of spirit, and finally of the Stigmata represent a union with God approached only by Galahad's at the conclusion of the quest for the Grail. St. Francis' service to God, however, lasted a long lifetime, while Galahad died, at his own request, after the quest was over. In the end, though, both knights received the same reward.

Unlike Don Quixote, Francis lived in a social climate where knighthood was alive and flourishing, although somewhat degenerated from its earlier ideals. Francis was raised on dreams of this more degenerate style of knighthood and seemed on the path to continue in it. That the factor that turned him from that path was the intervention of God throws a new light on the question of what it is that has enabled the idea of knighthood to survive its social downfall and continue in the popular imagination even today. Still, though, Francis was a child of his age, idealistic where it was corrupt, but still cut from the same cloth. He provides a beginning point for the discovery of the heart of ideal knighthood, but to find the rest it is necessary to turn to a source further removed from the social system that supported Francis in his ideals: St. Maximilian Kolbe, the saint of Auschwitz.

Kolbe lived in a time and place that could hardly be farther removed from the stereotypical setting of knighthood: twentieth-century Poland. He lived in a world where Christianity, while still a strong force in society, was torn by political divisions and increasingly disregarded by "many who thought 'Catholic' synonymous with 'medieval'" (Treece 15). His vocation from early in life was the priesthood; his apostolate, publishing. He never fought in a war or trained as a soldier. Taken prisoner in a war he was not fighting, he responded with love and obedience. He died of starvation, in reprisal for the escape of another prisoner. None of these characteristics seem to predispose him to knighthood; at best he might seem to be "a cartoon Franciscan or Don Quixote in habit, sweet and sincere but essentially out of touch with reality and hence impotent" (Treece 15). His intelligence and business acumen might contradict this picture, but they would still not bring him any closer to any usual view of knighthood.

Nevertheless, Maximilian Kolbe not only thought of himself as a knight, he also founded an organization designed to recruit, train, and maintain knights of the Kingdom of God.

In most knightly traditions, a knight's journey begins with a desire to serve the king, or to win glory, or to gain wealth and status - various motivations, but usually associated first with relation to the king. Only the 'degenerate' knights of most chivalric romances (and parodies of them) put serving a lady at the head of their knightly ambitions. Kolbe certainly possessed a love for and desire to serve his Heavenly King; that was his purpose and goal in life. But his journey to the heavenly king was both begun and sustained by the influence of his lady, Mary Immaculate, and he never at any point saw a conflict between the various branches of his love and duty.

Kolbe's devotion to the Immaculata was in part hereditary, from his deeply Catholic family, but his personal association with her began very early as well. As a young child, asked by his exasperated mother what was to become of him, he prayed earnestly about the question and was answered by his famous vision of the Immaculata offering him two crowns, white for purity and red for martyrdom. The child did not hesitate. Like a knight entering his first tournament, he accepted both of his lady's favors and wore them proudly, the white throughout his life and the red at its end. This early choice set him on his life's path. Its direction changed frequently and drastically, with extremes from a Japanese mission to the concentration camp, but the Immaculata continued to guide him and he continued to obey.

Like his predecessor Francis, Kolbe did not always understand directions on the first try. During his seminary training, at one point he was so convinced that he "was in some way to be her soldier for God" that he nearly left the Franciscans to join the Polish army (Treece 10). Fortunately for him and for the world, his lady clarified her directions through the advice of his mother, and his knightly training continued. He entered the Franciscans and began his newspaper apostolate. Later he contracted tuberculosis, which continued to plague him throughout his life. Like Francis, however, he preserved his knightly ideals through all manner of changes: "he had learned he was to fight for God under Mary's leadership, not in literal but in spiritual combat" (15).

Maximilian Kolbe was active in the world, knowledgeable about its events and working tirelessly to establish the justice of his heavenly king. He took his identity and purpose from his service to his king, to the point where "when he was persecuted because he wore his Franciscan robe, something he could have avoided by taking it off...he for a long time refused to do it, feeling he should be distinguishable by his clothing and if this brought him ill treatment he should suffer it gladly for God's sake" (Treece 121). He was unfailingly courteous, both to men and women, and tried to avoid being singled out for special favors.

In true knightly fashion, he loved his lady, his queen, with fierce, unflagging devotion. He put a high stress on obedience, which, he said, "alone is the certain criteria of the will of God and consequently of the Immaculata" (Treece 14). He devoted all his works to her, and fought for her honor when it was threatened. He began "signing 'M.I.' after his name, signifying Miles Immaculatae" (Treece 17). And he founded an organization known as the Militia Immaculatae, which was so saturated with his purpose that it communicated by means of a magazine called The Knight.

The culmination of Kolbe's knighthood, as well as of his sainthood, was his death. He knew from his childhood that he was to die a martyr, and for a sick, elderly priest in the concentration camps, this seemed hardly unlikely. Kolbe, however, did not wait for martyrdom to happen to him: he waited for the occasion to arise, and then volunteered. His action saved the life of a Polish soldier, a husband and father, marked for death in reprisal for the escape of a prisoner. In accepting suffering for himself to save not only the defenseless man but his family, Kolbe acted according to the highest ideals of knighthood, using his abilities to protect the weak at a great cost to himself. His sacrifice also followed the highest ideals of Christianity: "Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for a friend," and Kolbe laid his down for a complete stranger - whom he nevertheless regarded as a friend.

This convergence of ideals sheds a greater light on the original question: what is it about knighthood that makes the knight so popular so far from his native climate? Francis felt it, and acted on it, in the declining years of the age of chivalry; Kolbe did likewise centuries after its apparent demise. Both men first sought it in the active life of a soldier - social knighthood - and then, called to the priesthood, simply transferred their search from the physical life to the spiritual. Both men also lived according to the highest ideals of Christianity, embracing lives of poverty and service and sharing in the sufferings of Christ, Francis through the Stigmata, the wounds of Christ, and Kolbe through martyrdom. Neither found any dichotomy between the two ideals. Rather, they integrated them, serving Christ as king and adjusting the rest of the matrix accordingly. This is the key point to both the spirituality and the knighthood of Francis and Kolbe: their devotion to and imitation of Christ.

In the legendary days of knighthood, the king was not only the liege lord of his knights, but a knight himself: Arthur "made knight of the best man that was there," then crowned King of England (Malory 11). This detail, central in the days of social knighthood, is no less central to the spiritual knighthood of Francis, Kolbe, and their successors: Christ, being the ultimate king, is also the ultimate knight. Those who are called by Him to knighthood will imitate Him, not only in his kingly functions, but also in His knighthood. They will become, as Sir Galahad, Sir Percival, and Sir Bors do, "My knights, and my servants, and my true children," in an explicitly religious form of knightly service: "for right as I departed my apostles one here and another there, so will I that ye depart" (Malory 779-79).

This, then, is the element missing from all but the truest portrayals of the knight: the knight not only serves God, he imitates God in all things, and is most truly himself when he is most truly like God. This imitation empowers his service to others and gives meaning to his adventures, his victories and his sufferings. Thus the knight, even in his most degenerate forms, is sympathetic even to those farthest from him because he reflects, however distortedly, the ideal for which man was created and to which he instinctively strives: the image of God.

The knight, his beginnings in social and political realities notwithstanding, is a creature of legend, not one that might appear casually on the street corner. As such, he stands removed from the workings of day-to-day life and is generally thought of, when thought of at all, as belonging to the world of recreation, having nothing to do with anything serious. And yet, this creature of children's stories appears continually in the 'real world,' to the point where Orson Scott Card can write a "fable for grown-ups" whose characters are a businessman/knight and his lady wife. This continued popularity seems inexplicable - in a world where Christianity is also classed as something remote from the 'real world.' In a world where Christ is king, however, it is only logical that the king should have His knights, and that those knights should be honored, "to the intent that noble men may see and learn the noble acts of chivalry, the gentle and virtuous deeds that some knights used in those days," that "all noble lrds and ladies...take the good and honest acts in their remembrance, and to follow the same" (Caxton xvii-xviii).

"Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand, therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the equipment of the gospel of peace; above all taking the shield of faith, with which you can quench all the flaming darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God."

- Ephesians 6:13-17

(c) 3 May, 2000
Updated 13 June, 2000
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