Catholic Knighthood: Then And Now

By JAMES MONTI

In the Divine Office of both the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms of the Roman Rite, there is on the feast day of the early Roman virgin martyr St. Cecilia (November 22) a remarkable antiphon traceable to a late fifth-century account of her martyrdom, a chant which has been sung in her office since the ninth century:
“When daybreak came, Cecilia cried out saying, ‘Make haste, O soldiers of Christ, cast off the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light’” (Benedictus antiphon, Breviarium Romanum, Rome, 1568, p. 905).
The “soldiers of Christ” to whom Cecilia is referring are her husband St. Valerian and his brother St. Tiburtius. Both men had been converted to the Christian faith by Cecilia, and Valerian had consented to his wife’s resolve to observe perpetual continence in their marriage. With these words Cecilia exhorted Valerian and Tiburtius to summon their courage as the two brothers went forth to their execution, to give their lives for Christ.
While the image of being a “soldier of Christ” can be applied to all the faithful, it resonates in a particular manner with Catholic men, whether they be priests, religious, or laymen. In the spiritual warfare that spans salvation history, Catholic men have a distinctive role to play as defenders and protectors.
Men in a special way reflect God the Father, who in the pages of the Old Testament reveals Himself as the all-powerful protector of His people Israel: “Who is the King of glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle!” (Psalm 24:8).
As the fathers of their children men partake of the fatherhood of God. And as the principle breadwinners in traditional family life, men in their labors also resemble God the Father in His work of creation. Men likewise bear in their manhood the likeness of God the Son, who came to Earth as a man and who, like a devoted husband willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for the protection of his wife, laid down His life for His bride the Church (Eph. 5:25-27).
Amid the expansive Christian culture of the Middle Ages the form of military service known as knighthood was transformed from an originally secular institution into a distinctly Catholic vocation enriched by the Church with sacred rites, prayers, and blessings. This transformation took place within the specific historical context of the Crusades to recover and liberate the Holy Land and Muslim-occupied Spain, but it was to have ramifications spreading far beyond the military realm as a refined expression of manly spirituality.
Christ came to be seen as the Knight par excellence, with the instruments of His Passion perceived as the weapons of His holy battle against Satan on Calvary. All men are called to share in this knighthood of Christ, to sacrifice themselves with manly courage and valor by joining our Lord on the battlefield in the fight for truth, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.
By the late twelfth century, those preparing to be invested as knights would spend the preceding night keeping a vigil of prayer in church. Candidates would also fast and go to Confession before their investiture, which took place during Mass, usually on a Sunday morning. The candidate’s sword, having been placed on the altar, would be blessed by the bishop; the candidate’s other arms would be blessed as well.
The bishop would then solemnly confer the sword upon the candidate, girding him with it, and would afterward “dub” him, the bishop lightly striking the new knight either with his hand or with the sword. The knight’s investiture would climax with his reception of Holy Communion.
The spirituality of knighthood is explained by the Third Order Franciscan Blessed Raymond Lull (+1316) in his book on chivalry. After noting how the shape of a knight’s sword resembles the cross, he speaks of the knight’s spear as representing truth and the horse he mounts as symbolizing courage.
The girding of the sword upon the new knight is for Lull a sign of chastity. We would add here that by the virtue of chastity men exercise their duty to be ever-vigilant stewards of their souls and bodies conformed in heart and mind to the battle plan of God.
Repeatedly the texts and prayers for the medieval rite of blessing a new knight speak of him as a defender, a man called “to maintain and defend the holy Catholic faith” (Blessed Raymond Lull), a defender of “the holy Church of God” armed to fight “the enemies of the Cross of Christ,” and as “a defender of churches, widows, orphans, and all serving God” (Pontifical of Durandus, c. 1294, in M. Andrieu, ed., Le Pontifical de Guillaume Durand, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1940, p. 449, 447, respectively).
Now as then, Catholic men are called to be defenders. The exercise of the manly role of being a protector will vary according to a man’s particular state of life.
Bishops and priests are called to be spiritual fathers to all the people entrusted to their care. A bishop, as Honorius of Autun (+c. 1135) explains, is required as a shepherd to protect his flock against the attacks of “heretics as against wolves.”
And being a protector requires vigilance. Drawing upon a passage from the Book of Ezekiel that speaks of being a “watchman to the house of Israel” duty-bound “to warn the wicked man from his way” (Ezek. 33:7-8), the medieval theologian Blessed Rabanus Maurus (+856) observes that a bishop must be a watchman of his people, ready to admonish them when necessary.
Like the Good Shepherd, priests as shepherds must be ready even to give their lives for their sheep.
A climactic scene in Franz Werfel’s retelling of the Lourdes apparitions, The Song of Bernadette, illustrates this well. When a government-sent psychiatrist threatens to have Bernadette taken into custody on a false charge of lunacy, her parish priest Dean Peyramale, paternally shielding the innocent child beside him with “the protecting power of his arms of steel,” manfully defiant, replies that if the gendarmes come for the girl he will tell them, “Load your guns well, my men, for your path lies over my dead body” (Franz Werfel, The Song of Bernadette, Ignatius Press, 2006, pp. 380-381).
As husbands and fathers, married Catholic laymen are charged with the protection of their own families. The foremost model of this is St. Joseph, whom we see acting quickly and decisively upon learning of the imminent threat to the Christ Child posed by Herod (Matt. 2:13-15). Who can begin to imagine the zeal with which Joseph responded to this angelic warning as he rose in the night, determined at all costs to protect and lead into safety his Jesus and his Mary?
Citing the earlier-mentioned Scripture passage concerning Christian matrimony from St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, St. Thomas More (+1535) explains that husbands should “love their wives, so tenderly that they should be of the mind, that to bring them to Heaven they could find in their hearts to die for them” in imitation of Christ (The Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer, book 8, in The Workes of Sir Thomas More Knyght, London, 1557, p. 744).
Similarly, Catholic married men are obliged to protect their children not only from physical harm but from spiritual dangers as well.
Single men too are called to be protectors. Occasions will arise when they will be summoned to assist some “fair maiden in distress,” whether she be a young woman or an infirm lady in her eighties.
By their role as protectors of women, men express reverence for the dignity of women as living sanctuaries of the Holy Trinity within which human life begins, or within which the lamp of holy virginity burns with divine love. The simple gestures of opening a door for a woman and of stepping aside to let her go first are silent expressions of this reverence.
A Catholic man must also stand ready to protect his aged parents when in their infirmity they become in need of his care. St. Thomas More is known to have devoted himself attentively to the spiritual and physical needs of his own father in the latter’s final illness, as More’s son-in-law William Roper relates in his biography of the martyr.

A Common Brotherhood

Just as women have an inborn inclination to be nurturers and caregivers, men have an inborn inclination to be protectors. Despite the risks or dangers this duty may entail, men find in their protective role a certain joy, for doing what God intends us to do brings peace to the soul.
Just as in medieval knighthood a man served under a king or commander, so too Catholic men should see their station in life as that of a knight in the service of Christ the King, ready to answer the call whenever the Lord commands them to charge into spiritual battle, and ready to persevere in His cause no matter what the cost.
The men of the Church — priests, religious, and laymen — are united by a common brotherhood in Christ. Catholic men in the lay state must lend their support to priests as “brothers in arms.” Our respective duties on the battlefield are markedly different, but we are all under the same Supreme Commander and High King, and we are all fighting for the same cause.
It is by prayer above all else that we as Catholic men will keep ourselves mission-focused, prepared like St. Joseph to do whatever the Lord asks of us. “Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle” (Psalm 143:1).