Ryan Reeves: Crusades (Part II)

Summary

TODO: Summary

Review questions

Content

The Second Crusade

Ryan Reeves: The Second Crusade

Overview

Source clip from Ryan Reeves

Summary points

Maintaining lands conquered after the First Crusade

One of the challenges once land was conquered during the First Crusade was that keeping a hold on it proved to be difficult; they could not just appoint a vassal and walk away, but had to actively maintain the conquered territories.

Moreover, the structure and politics of governance were much different as an occupying force than they were back home in feudal Europe.

Some of these inherent challenges, coupled with external pressures from the Turks and other Muslim neighbors, led to an existential threat to the newly established so-called “Crusader States” (aka Outremer).

Things came to something of a head in 1144 when the northern Crusader State of Edessa fell to Zengi. This territory was of strategic significance, because it controlled northern access to Jerusalem, which was particularly important in holding off invasions from the East.

The launching of the Second Crusade

In response to the fall of Edessa, Pope Eugene III issued another papal bull calling for a second crusade.

Now the Second Crusade in some ways started out better than the First Crusade in that there were no rag-tag peasant armies ravaging the countryside before even reaching the Holy Land. However, the Second Crusade still had to contend with Byzantine imperial authority, and the fact that what the Byzantine Empire cared for was not always the same as the Western crusaders. We already spent quite some time discussing the tension between East and West in our previous discussion of the First Crusade, but the point here is that this was no less true here than it was there.

Given how the Byzantines viewed themselves as the true inheritors of Rome’s legacy—and had not even asked for military aid this time (such that it was not even possible to use that as a fig leaf or pretext for sending large armies into the territories of the Byzantine Empire)—the Byzantines did not look particularly favorably upon the Western armies of the Second Crusade.

In fact, the Eastern Emperor of the time (Manuel I Komnenos) made the crusaders again swear an oath (not at all unlike the famous oath that Alexios I made crusaders swear during the First Crusade). To force their hand, Manuel gated access to food and supplies behind this oath of homage. As one might imagine, the Western crusaders didn’t like this very much.

So just as before, the Byzantine Empire was upset about undisciplined foreign armies tromping about in their territories, and the crusaders were upset by all the threats and strings attached to the aid provided by the Byzantine Empire; nobody was particularly happy.

None of this helped mend the rift from the Great Schism of 1054 or otherwise reduce tensions between East and West.

The failed siege of Damascus in 1148

Now, when the crusading European nobles undertook the Second Crusade, they were at times less focused on the military campaign than the war hawks of the time no doubt would have wished. However, it is likely that some of the “vacation mentality” condemned by other parties was likely exaggerated:

• The immense wealth, massive baggage trains, and high-society behavior of the nobles often gave off certain vibes to onlookers, regardless of how ready their soldiers might have actually been militarily. This means that some people may have simply misunderstood, rather than twisting things with any particular agenda.
• That said, it would have been in the best political interest of the Eastern Empire (or at least some forces therein) to paint the crusaders as lazy and wanton.

Even in the same breath as we note that there may have been a degree of intentional propagandistic smear campaign here, we cannot go too far in defending the nobles on the Second Crusade. The tendency of the nobles to bring their luxurious lifestyles on crusade was evidently enough of a concern that Pope Eugene III explicitly tried to ban it. In his papal bull Quantum praedecessores, he strictly forbade crusaders from bringing expensive clothes, hunting dogs, or falcons. The Pope wanted a penitent holy army, not a leisure expedition.

All this aside, you should not get the impression that the Second Crusade was all easy travel and sightseeing until everything somehow went horribly wrong at Damascus (as we will discuss in a moment). Rather, the French (under Louis VII) suffered catastrophic losses crossing the mountains of Anatolia, and the Germans (under Conrad III) suffered heavy losses in the Battle of Dorylaeum (1147).

So no matter how you slice it, it would be wrong to treat the pre-Damascus Second Crusade as merely being some sort of pleasure tour for the nobles. How can we know this? Well, armies don’t get slaughtered when sightseeing, right?

At any rate, after actually arriving, the crusaders decided to take back Edessa… or so one would have thought, given that the fall of Edessa is sort of what sparked the whole Second Crusade. But instead of Edessa, the crusaders actually set their focus on Damascus.

The problem with the crusaders choosing to attack Damascus was that they just did not have the resources to pull it off; they did not count the cost, so to speak. They tried to surround the city, but did not have enough soldiers to do it effectively.

Lest you think this was a conventional siege that drug on for months in an attempt to starve out the defenders, the crusaders didn’t even get near that far. Rather, the Siege of Damascus in 1148 lasted all of four days before the crusaders were forced into retreating while taking heavy losses.

The failure of the Siege of Damascus had several important consequences:

1. It damaged the relationship between the Crusader States and Western Europe.
2. It contributed to a loss of Christian control in the region.
3. It contributed to Mu’in ad-Din Unur losing control of Damascus to Nur ad-Din.

In this way, the Second Crusade went out with a whimper more than a bang, and ever remained something of an embarrassment.

Follow-on-topic: The terrible power of precedent

We spent a great deal of time in our previous study of the First Crusade explaining how the First Crusade came about, and how it was justified by the people of the time. In many ways, the First Crusade broke new ground, and blazed a new trail. While we may not ultimately agree with what logic was used to justify it, at the very least, arguments were put forward to justify marching hundreds of miles to go wage bloody wars (a point of view that found itself in direct contrast to the non-violence that central church authority had been pushing up to this point).

By way of contrast, the Second Crusade (and all those following) were merely copies of the formula that had been previously established, and by all accounts, seem not to have been quite as concerned with justification. This is not to say that there was no time spent on the matter, but merely that the precedent the First Crusade set meant that crusading as an idea was no longer completely novel and foreign to Europeans, and that had very important practical consequences in how the subsequent crusades played out.

It is a somewhat depressing state of affairs, in my opinion, when popes writing bulls to rustle up support for Yet Another Crusade is no longer noteworthy in the slightest, but merely “just another day in Medieval Europe”. People became more and more accustomed to the idea of engaging in violence in exchange for a plenary indulgence and remission of sin (for example), and entire industries popped up to support the military campaigns. In short, it became woven into the underlying fabric of society in the High Middle Ages.

As in the famous metaphor of a frog being boiled slowly, I think there is a degree of unconscious shifts in attitude that help explain how people could become desensitized to war and religious extremism to this degree. The takeaway point I draw from this is that precedent is a thing of terrible power. If you can ever get your foot in the door by getting the public to accept things “just once”, then it is scarily easy to turn “just once” into something with staying power.

The practical application I see in this for us as modern Christians is that whenever we perceive a situation that might set a dangerous precedent, we should make extra sure that whatever action is being taken has ironclad biblical support. For example, do we want to set the precedent of religious majorities imposing their moral beliefs upon everyone else through politics and control of the governmental system? What happens when Christians no longer hold the reigns, but some different belief system?

Or more apples-to-apples with the Crusades, what about when we see hatred being perpetrated in the name of Christ (be that against immigrants, against people of a different political persuasion, or against whoever else)? Do we understand that if we let it go unopposed, very quickly it will come to permeate the entire Church, just like a little bit of leaven leavens the whole lump (cf. Galatians 5:9)?

I do not think we think in these terms as much as we should. We cannot afford to be any less than perfect in our conduct, because whatever imperfections we allow to stand will quickly multiply out of control. The Bible commands us to police the Church from within (cf. 1 Corinthians 5), and I believe that the wisdom in this is in no small part tied up in the idea of avoiding setting bad precedents that give people a pretext.

The Third Crusade

Ryan Reeves: The Third Crusade

Overview

Source clip from Ryan Reeves

Summary points

Crusade mythologizing: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin

If the Second Crusade is the one one everyone did their best to forget, then the Third Crusade is the one everyone did their best to immortalize. Insofar as one can romanticize something as awful as war and slaughter, the Third Crusade was most certainly romanticized.

Not a small part of this boils down to the fact that the Third Crusade had two of the most legendary characters in the Middle Ages facing off against each other: Richard the Lionheart on the side of the crusaders, and Saladin on the side of the Muslims. Everybody always loves a good showdown between larger-than-life heroes, and so it is really no surprise that the clashes between these two brilliant military commanders always captured the public’s imagination.

Moreover, the fact that in the end the two military men apparently chose to end the fighting in a truce (at least as individuals they did; the fact that it did not survive much past them notwithstanding) sometimes gets brought up as evidence of their personal virtue. Of course, in reality, a good part of this truce was probably less about mutual respect and goodwill and a love of peace (and more about Richard needing to get back home to Europe to deal with court intrigue, and Saladin lacking bargaining power due to having recently lost important battles to Richard), but it doesn’t stop it from being a good story nonetheless.

Saladin’s portrayal in later Western sources (call it 13th century and later) is interesting, because it was not nearly as negative as one might think it would be, given that he was an enemy military commander, and a very successful one at that (given how many defeats he handed the crusaders). In fact, later writings about him almost border on hagiography.

Part of it is that for all of his military prowess, Saladin could also apparently be charitable and merciful. According to sources, he was very far from a greedy tyrant (in fact, one chronicler of his states that he was so poor when he died—on account of giving away all his individual wealth to his subjects—that there was not enough money remaining in his personal coffers to pay for his own funeral and burial). If one is to believe the glowing reports about his personal character (concerning, for example, his piety, his asceticism, his lack of personal greed, and so on), then Saladin was most deserving of ending up a standard-bearer for the Late Medieval notions of chivalry that rose to prominence. In fact, if his personal character was truly as sterling as reported, then Saladin would be a much better example of chivalric idealism than putatively Christian European nobles ever were, and there is some rich irony in this.

I should note that all of this European esteem for Saladin only came later. Immediately after Saladin’s military victories against the crusaders (i.e., in contemporary accounts), he was of course demonized in the propaganda, with all sorts of character assassination going on. It was only after time passed that positive portrayals of him (be they accurate or exaggerated) began to filter back to Europe and reshape his image for the better—for example, reports of his personal generosity, his strict adherence to treaties, his mutual respect with Richard the Lionheart, and so forth. Regardless of how true all this was, it is decidedly surprising on balance: most enemy leaders never achieve even a neutral PR outlook, much less a positive one.

At any rate, the fact that Saladin later came to be perceived as an adversary most worthy of respect—when paired with the already notable fame of Richard the Lionheart—turned accounts of the Third Crusade into the stuff of legend. As I see things, the tales of this renowned chivalric bromance (true or not) are partially responsible for whitewashing the crusades (particularly the Third Crusade), and making them seem exciting and noble rather than horrific and soaked through with the blood of innocents.

In a follow-on topic, we will take a deeper look at Richard the Lionheart and Saladin, and attempt to examine how much of this mythologized chivalric sentimentality that got applied to them was historically accurate, and how much was merely exaggerated or fanciful.

Saladin’s rise to power, and other background to the Third Crusade

Saladin was not a princeling who inherited rulership. He was Kurdish (not Turkish), and did not initially start with much power at all. Saladin’s uncle was named Shirkuh, and he was a mercenary commander under the Zengid dynasty. In 1164, Saladin and his uncle were sent to Fatimid Egypt, on the orders of the Zengid ruler Nur ad-Din (who should sound familiar; this is the same person we talked about in our discussion of the Second Crusade).

To summarize a much longer series of events:

• Saladin and his uncle were initially sent to restore Shawar as the vizier to the teenage Fatimid caliph al-Adid.
• Saladin’s uncle and Shawar had a power struggle after Shawar was reinstated.
• Meanwhile, Saladin was climbed the ranks of the Fatimid government (through a combination of his military successes against the crusaders, as well as having a personal relationship with al-Adid).
• After Saladin’s uncle died and Shawar was assassinated, Saladin ended up named vizier to al-Adid. So he initially exercised power from this position, rather than himself being the ruler.
• In fact, it was not until a few years after al-Adid’s death in 1171 that Saladin actually gained de jure ruling authority. Saladin had a complex web of relationships he had to balance:
  • Saladin was originally dispatched to Egypt as an officer under the command of his uncle by order of Nur ad-Din, the Zengid ruler of Syria. So technically, Saladin’s initial exercising of power in Egypt was acting under Nur ad-Din’s ultimate authority.
  • Just before the Fatimid caliph Al-Adid died, Saladin officially abolished the Fatimid Caliphate (which was religiously aligned to a sub-branch of Shia Islam). He ordered the Friday sermon (khutbah) to be read in the name of Al-Mustadi, the Sunni Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad. Legally, this meant he recognized the Abbasid Caliph as the supreme religious and political sovereign, making Egypt a province under the Abbasid sphere rather than an independent realm under his own name.
• Nur ad-Din died in 1174, and after that, Saladin began to expand his power into Zengid holdings in Syria. In 1175, the Abbasid Caliph officially granted him the title of “Sultan of Egypt and Syria”, legally recognizing his independence and formalizing the creation of the Ayyubid Dynasty.

Saladin subsequently consolidated his power and successfully led military campaigns against the crusaders, and in 1187 he not only took the city of Jerusalem itself, but also the majority of the surrounding areas. This was the first time since 1099 (when the crusaders took Jerusalem at the end of the First Crusade) that it came to be back in Muslim hands.

The basic course of the Third Crusade

With Saladin’s conquest of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1187, the remaining Crusader States found themselves in danger of being completely conquered by the Muslim armies. So what did Christendom do? Call a crusade, of course.

In October 1187 Pope Gregory VIII issued the papal bull titled Audita tremendi, calling for the Third Crusade. (Interestingly, this fellow was a very short-lived pope; he died after being in office for only 57 days).

And so the armies launched, including the forces led by the aforementioned Richard the Lionheart, as well as others, notably Frederick Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Emperor at the time.

The Third Crusade can really be split into two parts:

1. The Crusade of Frederick Barbarossa
2. The Crusade of Richard the Lionheart and Philip II of France

For our purposes here, we are mostly going to focus on the Crusade of Richard the Lionheart and Philip II of France (although it is important to note that Frederick Barbarossa’s forces had inflicted losses on the Muslims before the second round of armies ever arrived in the Levant).

The crusaders recaptured the city of Acre in July 1191. This contributed to a series of events that ultimately led to Richard the Lionheart being the only main crusader leader still present:

• After the recapture of Acre, Richard, Philip and Leopold V of Austria quarreled over the spoils.
• Richard cast down the German standard from the city, slighting Leopold.
• There was also conflict due to Richard supporting a different candidate for kingship of Jerusalem compared to the other two: Richard supported Guy of Lusignan, while the other two supported Conrad of Montferrat (who was related to them both).
• Eventually it was decided that Guy would keep his rule for the time being, but that the crown would go to Conrad upon his death.
• Frustrated with Richard, both Philip and Leopold took their armies (at least most of them) and left the Holy Land. Philip was also in poor health, which may have also contributed to his decision.
• All of this is why Richard is usually the main person you hear about when it comes to crusader leadership in the Third Crusade.

After the capture of Acre, Richard marched on the city of Jaffa, an important port city. Saladin attacked Richard’s army north of Jaffa at Arsuf. At the end of the day, the crusaders emerged victorious. This had several important consequences:

• Despite the fact that the Muslim army was not destroyed (merely routed), it was a big morale boost to the crusaders, and a big morale blow to the Muslims.
• This defeat dented Saladin’s veneer of invincibility, and proved Richard’s skill as a military commander.
• Depriving the Muslims of access to the coast was pretty important from a strategic perspective.

After Jaffa, negotiations were opened between Saladin and Richard; Saladin sent his brother Al-Adil to negotiate. Ultimately negotiations did not prove successful, and Richard marched on Jerusalem. Muslim morale in the city was very low, but due to bad weather and caution (Richard likely feared getting trapped by a relief army if the crusaders besieged the city), Richard had the crusaders retreat back to the coast.

Richard tried to get the aid of Conrad of Montferrat, but he refused, citing Richard’s alliance with Guy of Lusignan, his political rival. Richard was forced to accept Conrad as king of Jerusalem after an election by the nobles of the kingdom, although Conrad was assassinated before he could be crowned. While contemporaries of Richard were quick to try and pin the assassination on him for political reasons, most historians actually do not think he ordered the hit.

During the winter of 1191, the crusader forces raised new fortifications at Ascalon, which Saladin had previously razed, and in the spring of 1192, there were further skirmishes between the two sides. In May, the crusaders took Darum, threatening the borders of Egypt itself. Despite then advancing on Jerusalem, the crusaders did not retake the city, due to leadership disagreements. Richard (among others) wanted to force Saladin to relinquish Jerusalem by invading Egypt, thereby attacking the underlying basis of Saladin’s power. However, the leader of the French contingent (Hugh III of Burgundy) pushed for a direct attack on Jerusalem. This split the crusaders into two factions, and unfortunately for them, neither group was strong enough on its own to achieve its desired objective. Somewhat petulantly, Richard refused to lead the army as commander if they attacked Jerusalem, saying that he would instead only act as a normal soldier. In the end, without unity in purpose, the crusader army again retreated back to the coast.

In July of 1192, Saladin successfully recaptured Jaffa with a surprise attack. In response, Richard sailed to Jaffa with a small force of about 2,000 men, and they stormed Jaffa from their ships, despite being massively outnumbered. The Ayyubids—who had been unprepared for a naval attack—were driven from the city. The subsequent counter-offensive by Saladin ended in complete failure, and the Muslims were forced to retreat, cementing their weakened hold on the coast.

In September 1192, following his defeat at Jaffa, Saladin was forced to sign a treaty with Richard, commonly called the Treaty of Jaffa. The treaty basically held that Jerusalem would remain under Muslim control, but that the Muslims would allow unarmed Christian pilgrims and traders to visit the city. It also held that Ascalon would be returned to the Muslims, because it served as important communications bridge between Saladin’s holdings in Egypt and Syria. Richard left soon after the signing of the treaty in order to return home to deal with political unrest:

• After abandoning the Third Crusade, Philip began to plot against Richard, and supported a revolt by Richard’s younger brother, Prince John.
• Given the string of victories that the crusaders had been having under Richard’s leadership, it is actually likely they could have forced a more complete victory if Richard had not been pressured by circumstances to return home to protect his rule.

At any rate, in the end, neither side was entirely satisfied with the results of the war. Though Richard’s military victories had deprived the Muslims of important coastal territories and preserved the existence of the Crusader States in at least some form, the crusaders had still failed to completely reclaim Jerusalem. Likewise, many in the Muslim world felt were unhappy about the fact that Saladin had failed to drive the Christians out of Syria and the Holy Land.

Group discussion: The Third Crusade

Follow-on topic: Evaluating Richard the Lionheart and Saladin as chivalric heroes

Overview

So, was there actually any truth to the chivalric tales spun about Richard the Lionheart and Saladin (both as individuals, and their supposed relationship with each other), or was it all overly idealized and romanticized nonsense spun by bards trying to earn a living?

To be honest, it can be tricky to separate fact from myth in accounts about these men (given the inherent bias in many of the historical sources in wanting to turn them into what amounts to novel protagonists). You might compare the preoccupation some people have with modern celebrities. Put bluntly, how objective do you think a celebrity’s groupies are in relating details about them? Not terribly, right? And therein lies much of the problem we must grapple with here in source analysis.

Of course, King Richard the Lionheart had his haters too (bankrolled by his political opponents and what have you), and there was also plenty of contemporary negative propaganda floating around out there about Saladin (who was, after all, an enemy military commander)… but regardless, you can hopefully understand why we have to exercise more than a little caution in just blindly believing the historical accounts that come down to us.

We do not have the time and space here do a full detailed accounting of all the historical evidence, but I wanted to do a flyby overview of some of the reasons why Richard the Lionheart and Saladin may have ended up painted as chivalric heroes. Ultimately, I think you’ll see that while there probably was plenty of exaggeration and Procrustean twisting of the facts to make the chivalric narratives fit, these chivalric narratives also did not completely come out of nowhere. As in most things, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

I have adopted the following structure in examining this matter:

1. Analysis of purported evidence of Richard the Lionheart displaying chivalric qualities
2. Analysis of purported evidence of Saladin displaying chivalric qualities
3. Analysis of purported evidence of Richard the Lionheart and Saladin acting chivalrous towards each other
4. Discussion of disconfirmatory evidence
5. Conclusions

Analysis of purported evidence of Richard the Lionheart displaying chivalric qualities

Rescuing his fiancée in Cyprus (1191)

The narrative:

• In April 1191, a heavy storm scattered Richard’s fleet as they traveled from Sicily toward the Holy Land, for the Third Crusade
• The ship carrying Richard’s sister Joan (the widowed Queen of Sicily) and his fiancée Berengaria of Navarre sought shelter off the southern coast of Cyprus near Limassol.
• The island’s ruler, Isaac Komnenos, intended to capture Joan and Berengaria for ransom. (Technically he never actually did capture them—since they never left their ship in the harbor—but they were still trapped on board). Isaac did plunder the other English ships that had wrecked on the shore and imprisoned their surviving crews.
• When Richard arrived shortly after and discovered what happened to the women and other ships, he invaded the island, and quickly conquered it.
• He then immediately married Berengaria in Limassol.

Analysis:

• All of this is not particularly up for debate: this general series of events most certainly happened.
• To what degree Richard’s fury was on account of his fiancée’s mistreatment is a bit more up for debate. The tale certainly sounds like something straight out of a chivalric romance: in response to his woman being mistreated, the powerful king conquers the entire island, and then marries her right then and there. You can certainly see why this narrative would help mold a certain persona for Richard.

Personally leading the charge during the crusader victory in the Battle of Jaffa (1192)

The narrative:

• In July 1192, Saladin launched a surprise attack to recapture the port city of Jaffa. Hearing the news, Richard sailed from Acre with a few dozen knights, some infantrymen, and few hundred crossbowmen.
• In medieval warfare, an amphibious assault against a defended beach was considered a logistical nightmare. Because of this, Richard’s own knights and advisors begged him to turn the ships around, arguing that landing such a small vanguard directly into the teeth of Saladin’s massive army was suicidal.
• But despite being outnumbered and attacking a fortified position, Richard personally led his knights in wading through the waist-deep surf, fought his way onto the beach, and fiercely drove Saladin’s forces out of the city.
• Somewhat astoundingly, this amphibious assault was just the beginning. After losing the city, Saladin brought a large, fresh force to launch a counter-offensive, and Richard’s forces were this time even more massively outnumbered—as in a couple dozen mounted knights, a few dozen unmounted knights, some infantrymen, and the aforementioned crossbowmen (perhaps totaling 2,000 soldiers in total) against some 7,000 Muslim cavalry and additional foot soldiers. But despite the odds, Richard again personally led the crusaders to victory.

Analysis:

• These asymmetric victories at the Battle of Jaffa—both with Richard leading directly on the front lines—contributed to his legend, and reputation for reckless personal bravery.

Channeling his inner tragic hero in his captivity (1192–1194)

The narrative:

• On his way back from the Third Crusade, Richard faced shipwreck, and was forced to take a dangerous land route through central Europe.
• Shortly before Christmas in 1192, on his way to his brother-in-law (Henry the Lion), Richard was captured in Vienna by the men of Leopold V, Duke of Austria, who accused Richard of murdering his cousin Conrad of Montferrat. (Leopold also didn’t like Richard because he had cast down his standards from the walls of Acre).
• Leopold had Richard held in Dürnstein Castle. In March 1193, Richard was handed over to Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI, and then held for ransom.
• During his captivity, Richard wrote the musical piece Ja nus hons pris, which is addressed to his half-sister Marie. He wrote it to express his feelings of abandonment by his people and family.
• Henry VI demanded that 150,000 marks (100,000 pounds of silver) be delivered to him before he would release Richard—an even greater amount than the ~100,000 silver marks raised by the Saladin tithe only a few years earlier, and two to three times the annual income of the English Crown under Richard.
• By means of heavy taxation, the funds were eventually cobbled together, and Richard was released from captivity in February 1194.

Analysis:

• Despite being the main leader of the crusading forces during the Third Crusade, it is true that Richard was put in chains.
• His own poetic bemoaning of his fickle friends and family certainly helped make him out to be a tragic hero unjustly abandoned. And of course he didn’t just send letters requesting aid, but composed an entire song. That certainly had something to do with his legend.
  • The song is actually considered to be quite good too, both by those who study its artistic merits (i.e., the music and poetry side of it), and historians who study its intent as a piece of savage political guilt-tripping.
  • Richard actually wrote it in two distinct dialects simultaneously—Old French and Occitan—so it could be performed and understood by nobles across both the north and south of his domains.
• The song aside, some accounts of Richard’s eloquence in captivity are probably exaggerated. For example, the “I am born in a rank which recognizes no superior but God…” speech was probably made up by Jonathan Duncan in the early 1800s. Which is sort of a pity, because it’s a great speech.

Pardoning his killer (1199)

The narrative:

• In March 1199, Richard was in France suppressing a revolt by Viscount Aimar V of Limoges.
• Late in the month, Richard was hit in the shoulder by a crossbow bolt, and the wound turned gangrenous.
• The chroniclers are all over the place about who exactly it was that shot him (both the exact identity, and even whether it was a man or a boy), the motives of this individual, and much more. However, the story basically goes that Richard ordered the person who shot him to be brought before him, and subsequently forgives him. Some accounts have Richard saying “Live on, and by my bounty behold the light of day”.
• Past that, according to some chroniclers, Richard gave the person 100 shillings—equivalent to multiple years of continuous wages for a common man—presumably with the intent that the person not only survive, but even thrive.

Analysis:

• This one has quite a bit more uncertainty on the whole, I’d say. The sources are pretty united on the fact that Richard forgave his killer in a final act of chivalry, but past that, they contradict each other on quite a bit.
• Some of the sources say that despite Richard’s forgiveness of his killer, Mercadier (one of Richard’s mercenary captains) had the person flayed alive and hanged after Richard’s death.
  • While I can’t say I’m certain this happened, it certainly seems more realistic to me than letting the killer of a king off scot-free.

Analysis of purported evidence of Saladin displaying chivalric qualities

Sparing the wedding tower at Kerak (1183)

The narrative:

• During Saladin’s Siege of Kerak in 1183, the stepson of the castle lord was holding his wedding inside; Humphrey IV of Toron was marrying Isabella of Jerusalem.
• According to the traditional account, Lady Stephanie of Milly (the groom’s mother) sent food and wine out from the wedding banquet down to Saladin’s camp, and reminded him that Saladin had once been held in her arms as a child or young man while he was serving as a prisoner at Kerak.
• Supposedly, Saladin then asked in which tower her son and daughter-in-law were staying, and then purposefully avoided bombarding it during the siege.

Analysis:

• Historians are pretty skeptical of this one overall:
  • The account comes from Ernoul, and is likely to be somewhat biased, due to his personal connections. He would have probably drawn on information from Queen Maria Komnene of Jerusalem, mother of the bride and wife of his patron, Balian of Ibelin.
  • Contemporary Muslim historians who were actually in Saladin’s employ mention the Siege of Kerak and the intense bombardment, but they completely omit the romantic story about sparing the wedding tower.
• It is also possible that some version of the story is true, but the reasons were far less romantic:
  • Some historians speculate that actually Saladin attacked when he did specifically because the royal wedding would give him many high-value hostages. Under this line of thought, it would make sense not to kill all the people he wanted to take hostage, so perhaps that is why he would avoid targeting the tower.
  • It is also possible practical reasons prevented Saladin from targeting the tower the wedding was held in. Kerak Castle was a massive, highly elevated fortress protected by deep rock-cut moats. Saladin’s trebuchets were probably primarily targeting the northern, more vulnerable fortifications of the castle. If the wedding tower was located on a southern ridge or a naturally inaccessible face of the fortress, Saladin’s engines wouldn’t have been able to effectively hit it anyway. A tactical inability to bombard a certain part of the castle could easily have been romanticized into a deliberate, noble choice to spare love’s celebration.

The captive King Guy and the cup of water (1187)

The narrative:

• According to several sources, after defeating the Crusader army at the Battle of Hattin in 1187, Saladin brought the captured crusader leader, King Guy of Lusignan, into his tent, and gave him a cup of iced rose water to drink.
• Guy drank and passed the cup to the notorious Crusader lord Raynald of Châtillon.
• Saladin then directly states that because he had not himself offered the cup to Reynald (but instead Guy had), then he was not bound by the sacred laws of Muslim hospitality (wherein host was bound to protect anyone given food or drink) when it came to Raynald.
• Because Reynald had repeatedly broken oaths and attacked Muslim caravans, Saladin executed him, but he reassured the terrified King Guy that “kings do not kill kings”.
• By reassuring Guy with this line, Saladin separated the treatment of honorable enemies from the treatment of truce-breakers. True to his word, Guy was not harmed; he was taken to Damascus as a high-status captive, and eventually released the following year.

Analysis:

• This one is pretty well-attested in the historical sources (both Saladin’s Muslim biographers, and even in Christian sources too).
  • Although in Ernoul’s account, Raynard refuses to even drink to begin with.
• One of the key parts of this narrative that ties into ideas of chivalry is the notion of “honorable enemies”.

The surrender and ransom of Jerusalem (1187)

The narrative:

• When Saladin recaptured Jerusalem in early October 1187, he refused to allow for mass slaughter (as happened during the Christian capture of the city in 1099).
• He permitted the Christian inhabitants to buy their freedom with a reasonable, standardized ransom (10 dinars for men, 5 for women, 1 or 2 for children).
• When thousands of the poorest citizens—including women, children, and elderly people—could not afford the ransom, Saladin graciously let many of them go free (although some were still enslaved).

Analysis:

• Sources (including Christian sources) widely agree that Saladin prevented a repeat of the terrible atrocities that occurred 88 years earlier when the Christians took the city.
  • This direct acknowledgment from his enemies is exactly why Saladin became a legendary figure of chivalry in Western European medieval literature.
• While it is true that he did not let absolutely all those captured go free (i.e., some did end up enslaved), he and his brother Al-Adil really did personally set thousands of vulnerable people free.

Analysis of purported evidence of Richard the Lionheart and Saladin acting chivalrous towards each other

Saladin sending fruit and ice to a sick Richard (1192)

The narrative:

• Near the end of the crusade in 1192, Richard fell sick (probably with malaria), and asked Saladin for “fruit and ice” and “pears and plums”.
• Saladin honored this request, and sent envoys with the requested gifts.

Analysis:

• Both Christian and Muslim accounts are clear that Saladin honored this request, and really did send these things to the sick Richard.
• However, one Muslim chronicler actually directly states that part of Saladin’s motive in this was to spy on Richard’s camp, and modern historians definitely agree that that was likely at least part of his motives.
• Moreover, historians also point out that continuous, courteous gift-giving was a standard medieval practice used to keep communication channels open, stall for time, and buy breathing room.
• Finally, it was also just good propaganda for Saladin to do this in order to appear noble and benevolent. Providing aid to an adversary who formally requested it aligned with Islamic principles of hospitality and magnanimity toward an enemy, and that was very much an image that Saladin wished to cultivate.

The Muslims sending Richard warhorse(s) during the battle of Jaffa (1192)

The narrative:

• One Western account—Itinerarium Regis Ricardi—states that Saladin’s brother, Al-Adil, noticed that Richard’s forces were critically short of horses. Impressed by Richard’s prowess and exceptional bravery, he sent two noble Arabian horses across the lines as a gift.

Analysis:

• Historians generally agree that the horse incident is a fictional piece of medieval propaganda or romanticization.
  • For Western chroniclers, inventing this story served to highlight the unmatched bravery of Richard (portraying him as so fearsome that even his enemies felt guilty seeing him on foot).
• There is also the fact that even more than just being silent on the matter, the most authoritative and detailed Muslim record of the Third Crusade—written by Baha ad-Din ibn Shaddad (Saladin’s close advisor, personal biographer, and judge of the army)—indicates that Al-Adil was not even present at the Battle of Jaffa due to illness, making the core of the Christian narrative historically impossible.

Discussion of disconfirmatory evidence

Richard honestly had more of a relationship with Al-Adil than Saladin himself

Perhaps the most obvious problem with with the whole chivalric bromance narrative between Richard and Saladin is that they never actually met each other in person. Ever.

Richard repeatedly requested face-to-face meetings with Saladin to negotiate terms. Saladin consistently refused. He explicitly noted that it was improper and dangerous for kings to meet as enemies unless a binding treaty had already been signed, because if a meeting went poorly, all trust would vanish completely. Instead, Saladin forced Richard to negotiate through his brother, Al-Adil.

Richard seems to have had a reasonably respectful personal relationship with Al-Adil. Since he was the one actually sent as a negotiator, he was the one Richard actually interacted with.

Why then the focus on Saladin, not Al-Adil?

In the centuries following the crusades, Saladin became an absolute obsession in European literature. Writers like Dante Alighieri famously praised his virtue, and he was romanticized as the ultimate emblem of Eastern chivalry. Because Saladin was already verified to have sent Richard fruit and ice when the king was sick, it became incredibly easy for later medieval troubadours and Renaissance storytellers to credit Saladin with all grand acts of chivalry—including the horse incident we discussed above. Even though the original Western sources themselves stated that that was Al-Adil that sent the horses, not Saladin!

While Al-Adil was a brilliant military commander in his own right—and the primary, day-to-day diplomat negotiating face-to-face with Richard—he simply did not possess the same mythic star power in Europe as his brother. For a casual audience listening to a campfire tale or reading a romantic poem centuries later, explaining who the Sultan’s brother was added unnecessary clunkiness to the plot. Substituting Al-Adil with Saladin streamlined the narrative into a direct, poetic respect between the two ultimate heads of state.

You can also sort of understand the substitution in the horse tale by analyzing what such a change would do to elevate Richard’s prestige. In the minds of Western chroniclers, it was impressive if the Sultan’s brother respected Richard; but it would be legendary if Saladin himself—the conqueror of Jerusalem who had smashed the Christian armies at Hattin—was so awestruck by Richard’s fighting prowess that he paused the battle to send him horses.

Is it nonsense? Very much so. But it is cool-sounding nonsense, and so it endured.

The Massacre at Ayyadieh (1191)

After the fall of Acre in 1191, Richard wanted to exchange a large number of Muslim prisoners from the city for the True Cross, a large number of gold pieces, and Christian prisoners of war held captive by Saladin.

A deal was struck, with a timeline for Saladin to fulfill his end of the bargain. But Richard and Saladin were distrustful of each other, and each side demanded that their opponent’s hostages be released first.

After the agreed time limit for the Muslims ran out, Richard grew convinced that Saladin was intentionally stalling to buy time and marshal his forces to retake the city. So Richard decided to have his hostages publicly executed… and did so.

In retaliation, Saladin and Muslim forces subsequently executed Christian prisoners held in their custody.

This unpleasant exchange is conveniently ignored in the chivalric bromance accounting of things, even though Muslim sources tell us that this Massacre at Ayyadieh never really went away in Saladin’s mind, and caused him to never really trust Richard. That is, the massacre here left a permanent stain on all subsequent diplomatic efforts between the two, in that Saladin became hyper-vigilant and deeply skeptical of any promises Richard made.

Further reading

See:

• King Richard the Lionheart and Saladin had a frenemy bromance thing going on according to some historians. Should we believe this claim, or was this just King Richard’s propaganda to show that even his infidel enemies loved him? : r/AskHistorians
• What did Saladin think of Richard the Lionheart and Baldwin IV? : r/AskHistorians

Conclusions

While they exchanged formal diplomatic gestures of “chivalry”—such as Saladin sending ice and fruit to Richard when the king was struck with fever—these were probably more calculated moves of high-stakes medieval diplomacy and propaganda than sincere expressions of mutual respect. Beneath the courtly manners, Saladin never forgot the bloodbath at Ayyadieh, and he took precautions against crusader betrayal until his death in March 1193.

In my opinion, this does not mean that Richard and Saladin were completely unworthy torchbearers for ideals of European chivalry, but merely that there was a heavy dose of exaggeration present in the tales about them.

Follow-on-topic: The only hero we should worship is Christ

No human beings are worthy of worship, in the formal sense

When we speak of worship (cf. the Greek verbs προσκυνέω, λατρεύω, σέβομαι, and the concordance hits that go along with them; also cf. this Biblical Hermeneutics Stack Exchange Q&A), we are speaking of an attitude of utmost reverence and respect. The imagery evoked by some of the verbs is literally getting down on your hands and knees and bowing with your face to the ground.

Throughout history, some human kings and emperors have demanded this of their subjects. In truth, only God is worthy.

These are the First and Second Commandment (of the Ten Commandments). Put simply, worshipping things other than God is idolatry. Full stop.

If we aren’t even supposed to worship angels (cf. Revelation 19:10; Revelation 22:8-9), how much less human beings, who are here today and gone tomorrow (cf. 1 Peter 1:24, quoting Isaiah 40:6–8; James 4:14)? What is the glory of mankind, that humans should be worshiped? Is a man strong? His strength will fade. Is a woman beautiful? Age will catch up with her, and strip it away. Is a man rich? Time and circumstance can deprive him of it all.

In fact, the life of Richard the Lionheart is an excellent demonstration of the principle. In a matter of days, Richard went from being crowned in glory and honor as the respected leader of the crusader forces to harsh imprisonment and deprivation.

And Saladin? The empire he built with his own hands fractured and splintered nearly instantly after his death, as his successors fought each other for power.

No matter how great the human leader, they are still mortal flesh. They still bleed and die, and take nothing with them in death. All of their achievements are temporary and ephemeral. They are not worthy of our worship—even the most impressive among them. Why? Because they are not God.

Inasmuch as regular human kings actually have honor and glory, they’ve got nothing on Jesus

Even if we set aside His divinity for a moment (and the fact that only divinity is truly worthy of worship), Jesus puts all other kings so far in the shade that they aren’t even worthy of being compared.

Jesus is the true heir to the Davidic throne, and His reign will know no end (cf. Isaiah 9:7; Luke 1:33). He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords (Revelation 19:16). He isn’t a King; he is the King. Everyone else rules by means of a small slice of delegated divine authority (Romans 13:4); Jesus has been given all authority (Matthew 28:18).

If loyal subjects feel tingly and awestruck in the presence of their monarchs (to such a degree that we are impressed by said monarchs), then consider that in the presence of Jesus, His enemies will bow down and confess His glory (Isaiah 45:23; Romans 14:11; Philippians 2:10), whether they want to or not. That is the nature of the raw majesty Jesus possesses as the Son of God.

One might go on. The point is, once we properly understand who Jesus truly is, then any impulse we might have to glorify regular human beings should be dwarfed by our appreciation for Jesus’s surpassing perfection. If we even manage to grasp a shred of the awe we ought to possess, we will esteem Jesus so much higher than human kings that the latter will seem to us like so much refuse.

Honestly don’t feel that way at present? Then maybe you need to spend some additional time in the Word studying who exactly Jesus is. Once we properly grasp Jesus’s identity as the Prince of the Universe–the Firstborn of All Creation—then the only proper response is to get down with our face to ground in fear and reverence. His Majesty’s glory simply demands it.

Any positive characteristic of human kings Jesus does better

Is a king just? Are His judgments sound? Jesus is perfectly just and will be the perfect judge of the entire universe (John 5:22).

Is a king mighty on the battlefield, and full of valor? Jesus will single-handedly annihilate all His enemies at Armageddon (Revelation 19:11-21).

Is a king merciful and benevolent? Jesus personally went to the cross for His enemies, and died for us while we were yet sinners (Romans 5:8).

In short, if some human kings are comparatively noble and impressive (and they may well be), Jesus is more impressive, to a superlative degree. Kingship doesn’t describe Him; He defines it.

Perhaps some of this comparison is lost on those of us who live in cultures that make noises about moving past such antiquated conceptions as royalty. We have democracy now, you see. Equality and all that.

But truly, Jesus is not on the same level as us, and thank God for that! Rather, His perfection is our goal and our target. As foot soldiers in the Army of Christ, we can look up to our Commanding Officer without a hint of jealousy, but only gratitude, because it is through His blood that we have been purchased out of slavery to sin. Rather than resenting the authority gap, we are glad to place ourselves under Him as servants in the household of God.

And we can rest easy in the knowledge that put on the scale of comparison, our King always wins, no matter who is on the other side of the comparison. We can take pride in Him and brag on Him all day long, like starry-eyed servants defending their master, like proud locals daring others to tangle with their boy. Do your worst, world. You’ll always lose. Because our King really is that good.

Jesus will return as the Glorious King, it is true. But first, He was the Suffering Servant. What does this teach us about true heroism?

If you look at history, people seem to mostly revere the Richards and Saladins of the world—those who impress by their power and might. But when we consider the most important event in all history—Jesus paying for our sins by being judged for them in our place—we are shown that the glory that surpasses all other glory actually found its form in suffering and self-sacrificing love, even unto the point of death upon a cross.

That is to say, even when it comes to Jesus, people stumble over the cross while reaching for the crown. Consider that in Revelation 5, the Lion of Judah is mentioned only once in verse 5, but the entire rest of the chapter (verses 6 through 14) is about the worthiness of the Lamb. Does our thinking accurately reflect this biblical distribution of focus and glory? Do we properly glorify the cross, or do we only want to see Jesus return in power?

What I am trying to say is that according to the Bible, true greatness is not as people think. Compare Matthew 18:1-5; Matthew 23:11-12; Mark 9:33-35. The path to true glory is through service and humility, not outward greatness.

Nobody has ever exemplified or will ever exemplify this better than Jesus:

In fact, it is on account of His voluntary humbling of Himself that the Father has raised Him to be higher than all others:

When we consider who to honor and respect in this life, we should save our praise for those who are great inwardly, not just those who are great outwardly. Because it is actually the Suffering Servant that crushed the head of the Serpent (cf. Genesis 3:15), not the Conquering King; Christ’s spiritual death upon the cross brought victory, not His might and power at Armageddon. This is not to say that we cannot glorify God for Jesus’s valor and majesty when He returns in power, but just that we should always remember that the Bible actually places much greater emphasis on what He did for us upon the cross.

Group discussion: On honoring human authority; how greed is idolatry

Follow-on-topic: Is European chivalry biblical?

Introduction: How ought Christians view extra-biblical moral codes generally?

We have spent a good bit of time in the last few lessons focusing on topics related to European chivalry. European chivalry was a code of morality external to the Bible. It is not actually the only one either: you might also compare the historical samurai moral code (known as bushido) as well, and in the modern day, we also have things like the Geneva Conventions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

What all such extra-biblical moral codes have in common is that… well, they aren’t terribly valuable in and of themselves, because our morality should only ever be governed by the Bible, and what God actually commands of us. Whatever moral guidelines humans manage to dream up on their own may be interesting from a historical perspective, but they are most decidedly not what we ought to actually base our behavior off of as Christians.

I come down pretty hard here, because it is extremely dangerous for us to not be black and white about this matter. God is the only one who gets to decide what is right and wrong; human consensus has absolutely nothing to do with it whatsoever.

We need to drink this down to the bitter dregs, so to speak. You will face extreme push-back for questioning things like the Geneva Conventions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to even the slightest degree. Don’t get me wrong; I am not trying to say that most of the stuff that these extra-biblical moral codes go over cuts against biblical morality. (In fact, I am comfortable saying that “in general”, there is quite a lot of good in these extra-biblical moral codes—protecting innocents and non-combatants, and the like). Rather, the point is that at the end of the day, we have a duty and responsibility to place the Bible and God’s commands above even these. Even if that earns us the scorn of the entire rest of the world.

And more relevant to our present topic, the exact same thing was true of European chivalry during the Middle Ages. If you were a knight in the High Middle Ages, you might have found yourself strongly encouraged to take certain actions based upon the dictates of European chivalry. But would taking these actions have actually been what was moral, according to God’s morality?

Demonstrating that European chivalry ≠ biblical morality, using counterexamples

I have decided that the clearest way to demonstrate the fact that European chivalry is far from the same as biblical morality is to go over a few counterexamples—situations in scripture where what European chivalry would have suggested is clearly not what God commanded.

I’ve chosen to separate this analysis into a few different wider categories. By and large, I am in these sections waving my hand a bit and making assertions about what European chivalry did and did not teach, without citing a lot of direct sources. I would encourage people to go look into these things themselves, and not just take my word for it.

Total warfare and utter destruction

European chivalry: Sparing innocents, and the spoils of war

In short, under European chivalry, knights were strictly bound to show mercy to those who surrendered and to protect non-combatants, particularly women, children, and the elderly.

Moreover, looting resources was a primary motivating factor behind a great deal of European chivalric warfare—knights would actively seek to acquire spoils, armor, livestock, and so on from the defeated enemy, and this was considered a legitimate reward for martial valor.

Biblical morality: The Old Testament principle of cherem

In several places in the Old Testament, God ordered the total annihilation of entire populations—compare the concept of cherem (Hebrew: חֵרֶם). Sparing things that God commanded to be devoted to destruction wasn’t seen as mercy; it was seen as sin.

In Deuteronomy 20:16–18, for example, God commands Israel regarding the cities of the Promised Land: “You shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall utterly destroy them.” We can see this in action in, for example, the conquest of Jericho (Joshua 6:21) and the campaign against the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15:3). Put simply, the execution of infants, women, and even livestock directly violates the black and white chivalric duty to defend the vulnerable and spare the helpless. Under European chivalry, such behavior would have been fully condemned.

Cherem also cuts against the notion of claiming spoils of war, in that the Israelites were directly forbidden from taking the wealth of their conquered pagan enemies, without exception.

Discussion: This concept of total destruction is probably the single biggest difference between biblical morality and extra-biblical moral codes governing rules of warfare

I think it is reasonable to say that this concept of cherem is probably the most glaring example of where God’s commands cut against not only European chivalry, but also most other extra-biblical moral codes that govern the rules of warfare (like the Geneva Conventions). Put simply, the notion of putting innocents to death by the sword is utterly incompatible with most of these extra-biblical systems of morality.

This is why I began by emphasizing that Christians must necessarily grapple with the matters we are going over here. You can either choose to believe that God’s morality surpasses human understanding (by placing biblical morality above anything humans come up with), or choose to believe that biblical morality is somehow backwards and evil because it supposedly condones the slaughter of innocents. There is no middle ground here. You must choose one approach or the other.

I should note that we are not the theocratic nation state of Israel, and we have also not been given a verbal command by God to utterly destroy enemy nations. These observations are important in understanding how something that may have been proper for the Israelites in their conquest of the Promised Land is not necessarily proper for us (or even for most all other times and places in history).

The treatment of noble prisoners of war

European chivalry: Ransoming captured nobles and royalty

Innocent non-combatants aside, there is also the matter of conventions surrounding the treatment of captured noble enemies.

Under European chivalry, capturing a fellow noble or king alive on the battlefield was the ultimate achievement. Knights were bound by honor—and financial interest—to spare defeated royalty, treat them with dignity, and hold them for a noble ransom rather than executing them on the spot.

Biblical morality: Samuel’s execution of King Agag in 1 Samuel 15

We might contrast this with 1 Samuel 15. Failing to execute Agag (king of the Amalekites) was part of the Lord’s reason for harshly rebuking Saul through the prophet Samuel. (As this chapter demonstrates, failing to execute the captured royalty was not at all viewed separately from failing to practice cherem, but was merely facet of that failure).

In 1 Samuel 15:33, Samuel orders the captive king to be brought forward. While Agag famously thinks the bitterness of death has passed, Samuel declares his judgment and “hacked Agag in pieces before the Lord.”

European chivalry strictly forbade the execution of an unarmed prisoner of war who had already surrendered, viewing it as a cowardly act that brought deep dishonor to a warrior. Moreover, it wasn’t even a warrior doing this execution, but a religious leader!

So no matter how you slice it, according to European chivalry, Saul’s actions here would have been considered right and proper. But in the biblical account, it is these very actions that lose him the Lord’s favor!

Unconventional warfare

European chivalry: Open, face-to-face engagements on equal terms

European chivalry strongly emphasized fair play and martial honor, viewing warfare as a stage for testing a knight’s personal courage, strength, and skill. To maintain honor, combat ideally required open, face-to-face engagements on equal terms, where an opponent had a fair chance to defend themselves. In other words, European chivalry required “conventional” warfare = building siege engines, scaling walls, engaging in open sallies, and so on. To defeat an enemy without ever crossing swords or giving them a chance to fight back was seen as robbing the warrior of true glory.

Biblical morality: The siege of Jericho in Joshua 6

Contrast these ideals with what happened in the siege of Jericho in Joshua 6. God commanded the Israelite army to silently march around the city once a day for six days, led by priests blowing rams’ horns (Joshua 6:3-4). On the seventh day, after seven marches, the priests blew the horns, the people shouted, and the walls collapsed flat on their own (Joshua 6:20). By using supernatural intervention to instantly drop the city’s defenses, the Israelites denied the defenders of Jericho any opportunity for a fair, tactical defense of their battlements. For a medieval knight, winning a fortress because the walls simply disintegrated would offer no personal honor or martial prestige.

In medieval Europe, there was also a strictly divided social hierarchy separating knights and warriors from clergy. Chivalry dictated that the warrior class should lead the charge and win the day through physical bravery. Yet when we consider the siege of Jericho, we see that it is the priests carrying trumpets of rams’ horns at the very front of the procession (marching ahead of the Ark of the Covenant) who are the tactical focal point of the assault.

Finally, medieval European chivalry was big on honorable, boisterous exchanges of challenges, and verbal heroic posturing. Joshua 6 does not merely not contain much of this, but exactly none of it. Why? Because Joshua commanded total silence until the very end, when he commanded them to shout (compare Joshua 6:10 with Joshua 6:16).

Biblical morality: Gideon’s nighttime defeat of the Midianites in Judges 7

Also contrast these ideals with Gideon’s defeat of the Midianites in Judges 7. Rather than taking to a formal battlefield to defeat the Midianites, Gideon and his small number of men entered the Midianite camp at night armed only with trumpets, empty clay jars, and torches hidden inside the jars (Judges 7:16). On Gideon’s signal, they smashed the jars, blew the trumpets, and flashed the torches, shouting, “A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!” (Judges 7:20). God then caused the panicked Midianites to turn their swords on one another in the dark.

Winning this battle through noise, psychological terror, and nighttime trickery—causing the enemy to self-destruct without a single Israelite drawing a blade—offered zero opportunities for the men to demonstrate personal bravery or win honorable accolades on equal terms. Instead, victory was simply handed to them.

Deception of enemies, up to and including assassination through deception

European chivalry: Honorable contests out in the open

Chivalry prized open, face-to-face combat on equal terms. Sneak attacks, espionage, and assassination by guile were viewed as dishonorable for a knight.

Biblical morality: Ehud’s assassination of Eglon in Judges 3

In Judges 3:15-23, Ehud used political deception to gain a private audience with King Eglon of Moab, then smuggled a hidden, double-edged dagger past the guards, and assassinated the unarmed, unsuspecting king in his own private chamber.

This was no battlefield—Ehud assassinated Eglon in his own home, where he would not be on guard.

Biblical morality: Jael’s assassination of Sisera in Judges 4

In Judges 4:17-22, Jael deceptively offered Sisera hospitality, intentionally put him at ease, and then drove a tent peg through his temple while he slept.

Guest-friendship and sacred laws of hospitality were a big deal in how European chivalry characterized honor. Violating them to assassinate a helpless opponent in one’s home would be seen as the most vile and dishonorable of approaches. And of course, European chivalry was also rather sexist, so would definitely not approve of killing an enemy warrior through the hands of a woman.

Martial prestige, and personal glory

European chivalry: Your prestige as a leader is measured by the size and rank of your forces

In medieval warfare, a commander’s prestige was directly tied to the size and splendor of his host, especially his retinue of noble knights. Intentionally dismissing eager warriors who had answered the call to arms would be seen as an insult to their honor and a betrayal of their loyalty. Moreover, even if you were to limit participation somehow, it would only ever be on the basis of courage, competence, loyalty, and other such practical variables. The idea of using arbitrary means to select forces would be scorned outright.

Biblical morality: God’s pride-crushing selection of Gideon’s forces in Judges 7

Contrast all this with what happened in Judges 7. Gideon’s forces start out at 32,000. But God said that was too many (Judges 7:2), and used an upfront test to dismiss 22,000 of the men (Judges 7:3). At least here those sent back were those who visibly displayed fear, making it not completely arbitrary, but still. But after that, God used completely arbitrary means to winnow down the remaining men to 300 (Judges 7:4-6). No matter how you look at it, how men choose to drink water has absolutely nothing to do with their abilities as warriors, their honor, etc. Yet this is exactly what God used to select Gideon’s men.

Intentionally telling capable, willing soldiers to leave the battlefield specifically to prevent them from taking credit for a victory directly attacks the knightly desire for personal glory and martial renown. It would simply not be done under the dictates of European chivalry, which celebrated the physical prowess and collective might of the warrior class. Furthermore, the arbitrary “how do the men drink” filtering mechanism bypassed all considerations of military rank, training, aristocratic background, equestrian prowess, combat readiness, etc. Choosing an elite strike force based on a drinking posture subverted the structured, honor-driven hierarchy of knightly selection.

In short, God’s instructions to Gideon here were specifically designed to strip away all conventional military pride, and that was much the point. Because it was God that delivered Israel, rather than them delivering themselves.

Defending personal honor

European chivalry: Honor must be defended, and anything less is cowardly

European chivalry was deeply tied to personal honor, the righting of insults through violence (think dueling), and the physical defense of one’s reputation.

Biblical morality: “Turning the other cheek” in Matthew 5

Defending one’s honor to the death is literally exactly the opposite of “turning the other cheek” (cf. Matthew 5:38-42). Turning the other cheek does not mean reasonable self-defense is forbidden to Christians, but rather that we ought to completely ignore attacks on our personal pride and dignity. But European chivalry was all about personal pride and dignity. The idea of letting people trample your honor underfoot without any form of retaliation is completely antithetical to European chivalry.

Conclusions

In all of this, we are not setting out to say that European chivalry was somehow terribly immoral or anything like that. The point is simply that extra-biblical moral codes (including European chivalry) can never replace biblical morality. Only God’s definition of right and wrong matter; everyone else’s definitions don’t.

As a generalization, the biggest problem with European chivalry is that it tended to emphasize the pride and honor of the knight over properly glorifying God. Compare the following verse:

God is always emphasizing that our deliverance comes through Him, not ourselves; we should not glory in ourselves or own achievements. Yet that is exactly what European chivalry encouraged knights to do.

Moreover, European chivalry defined honor through a set of rigid extra-biblical rules. True biblical righteousness is all about doing God’s Will as circumstances demand, not about following arbitrary rules devised by humans. And so it is that killing your enemies can be justified even if they are asleep without the means to defend themselves. If it is God’s Will for those people to be killed, then killing them is not only not sinful, but is actually godly.

On the flip side, you could fight the cleanest possible war as a knight—following the rules of European chivalry down to the smallest detail—and yet still be doing evil in the sight of the Lord. Even if you are a perfect gentleman on the battlefield, if the war is being waged to displace innocent people from their ancestral lands (for example), then it doesn’t much matter that you fought the fight honorably. It is still morally detestable.

So as always, we should keep our focus glued to the Bible, and the Bible alone. Only through its guidance can we ever hope to understand how we ought to conduct ourselves, be that in war or otherwise.

Group discussion: Godly morality versus rigid man-made moral codes