Knights and their days

by Dr. Doran

As marriage or the cloister was the alternative submitted to most ladies in the days of old, so young men of noble families had small choice but between the church and chivalry. Some, indeed, commenced with arms, won knightly honors, cared nothing for them when they had obtained the prize, and took up the clerical profession, or entered monasteries. There are many distinguished examples. There was first St. Mochua or Cluanus, who, after serving in arms with great distinction, entered a monastery and took to building churches and establishing cities. Of the former he built no less than thirty; and he passed as many years in one church as he had built of churches themselves. He was the founder of one hundred and twenty cells. He is to be looked upon with respect. Old warriors in our own days are often moved by the same impulse which governed Mochua; and when we see retired admirals taking the chair at meetings where Dr. Cumming is about to exhibit; or infirm major-generals supporting, with unabated mental energy, their so-called Puseyite pastors, we only look upon men who, acting conscientiously, are worthy of respect, and are such Mochuas as modern times and circumstances will admit of.

We have another example in Adelard, the cousin of Charlemagne. He was a gay and gallant chevalier at his imperial cousin’s court, and there was no stouter wielder of a sword in all the army; but Alard, or Adelard, grew weary of camp and court alike. He fled from some very pretty temptations in the one, as well as great perils in the other. The young prince, he was only twenty, took the monastic habit at Corbie, where he was employed as a gardener, and spoiled cartloads of vegetables before he got his hand and his thoughts to his new profession. He was occasionally busy too in the kitchen, but not to the visible gratification of the monks. Charlemagne often insisted on his appearing at court, where at last he held one or two high offices; and, when he left, wrote a book for the guidance of courtiers generally, by which the latter as little profited, say wicked wits, as other nobility, for whom a nation has long prayed that grace, wisdom, and understanding might be their portion. St. Adelard, for the imperial knight was canonized, lived to be the chief authority in the monastery where he had commenced as cook and gardener, and St. Gerard composed an office in his honor, in gratitude for having been cured of a violent headache through the saint’s interposition. This seems to me one of the oddest ways of showing gratitude for a small service that I ever heard of.

I believe that St. Cedd, Bishop of London, in very early days, was also of a family whose profession was military. When or why he entered the church I do not know; but he has some connection with military matters in the fact that Tilbury Fort occupies part of the site of a monastery which St. Cedd had founded, in which he resided, and which was the pride of all the good people in the then pleasant and prosperous city of Tillabury.

Touching St. Aldric, Bishop of Mans, there is no doubt whatever. He was of a noble family, and commenced life at twelve years old, as page to Louis le Debonnaire, at the court of Charlemagne. He was speedily sick of the court, and as speedily sick of the camp. At the age of twenty-one he withdrew to Metz, entered the clerical profession, and became chaplain and confessor to the sovereign whom he had once served as page. His military training made him a very sharp disciplinarian during the quarter of a century that he was bishop; and it is only to be regretted that he had not some influence over the king whose conscience he directed, and of whom a legend will be found in another part of this volume.

There was a second son of Eric, King of Denmark, known by the name of St. Knudt or Canute. He was Duke of Schleswig, and was much more of a monk than a duke. He was canonized accordingly for his virtues. He had a rough way of joking. His knights were nothing better than robbers and pirates, and he resolved to make them forswear violence and live peaceably. They represented, in vain, that they had a right to live as became knights, which Canute did not dispute; he simply dissented from the construction of the right as set down by the knights themselves. To prevent all mistakes on the matter, he one day condemned seven of these gentlemen to be hanged for acts of piracy. One of these exclaimed that, “fitting as the sentence might be for his fellows, there must necessarily be exemption for him.” He was like the German corporal in the “Etoile du Nord,” who can very well understand that it is quite proper that a man should be hanged, but could not comprehend that he himself should be the man. The Schleswig knight claimed special exemption on the ground that he was a kinsman of Canute. The latter allowed that this entitled him to some distinction, and the saintly duke hung his cousin six feet higher than any of his accomplices.

We come back more immediately to a knight who grew tired of his vocation, in the person of Nathalan, a Scottish noble of the fifth century. He sold arms, horses, and estate, divided the proceeds among the poor, and devoted himself to preparations for ordination, and the cultivation of vegetables. He bears a highly respectable reputation on the roll of Bishops of Aberdeen.

We meet with a man more famous, in Peter of Sebaste, whose pedigree showed more heroes than could be boasted by any of Peter’s contemporaries. He is not an example, indeed, of a man quitting the camp for the cloister; but he and two of his brothers exhibit to us three individuals who might have achieved great worldly profit, by adopting arms as a vocation, but who preferred the Church, and became, all three, bishops.

We have a similar example in the Irish St. Felan. His high birth and great wealth would have made him the flower of Irish chivalry, but he selected another profession, and despising chivalry, entered the Church. He went a Mundo ad Mundum, for it was from the hands of Abbot Mundus that he received the monastic habit. Thus, as it was wittily said, the world (Mundus) at once drove and drew him into the Church. It is clear, however, that, like the old war-horse, he pricked up his ears at the sound of battle, and took an interest in stricken fields. To such conclusion we must come, if it be true, as is asserted of him, that the battle of Bannockburn, in 1314, was won by Bruce through the saint’s especial intercession. The Dukes of Normandy owed equal obligations to St. Vaneng, who unbuckled the armor from his aristocratic loins, to cover them with a frock; and built churches for the Normans, where he offered up continual prayer for the Norman dukes.

Then again, there was William Berringer, of the family of the Counts of Nevers. No persuasion could induce the handsome William to continue in the career he had embraced, the career of chivalry and arms. His uncle, Peter the Hermit, may have had considerable influence over him, and his change of profession was by no means unprofitable, for the once horse-loving William became Archbishop of Bourges: and he defended the rights of his Church against kings and councils with as much boldness, zeal, and gallantry, as any knight could have exhibited against the stoutest of assailants.

Among our English saints, the one who most nearly resembles him is St. Egwin, who was of the royal blood of the Mercian kings, and who, after a short trial of the profession of arms, retired to the cloister, but was ultimately raised to the see of Worcester. The spirit of the man may perhaps be seen through the legend which says that on setting out on a penitential pilgrimage to Rome, he put iron shackles on his legs, the key of which shackles he flung into the Avon. This is very possible; but when we are told that on requiring the key at a subsequent period, he found it inside a fish, we see that the author of the legend has plagiarized from the original constructor of the story of Polycrates and his ring.