Two extreme views stand out in sharp contrast when knighthood and piety are placed within the same analytical frame. The cynical view merely dismisses the importance of piety to the arms bearers, whose entire thought went in other directions; the flagrantly romantic view asserts that the link between knighthood and religion not only was close, but took the ideal form desired by clerics. These distortions represent twin nightmares of any scholar hoping for close analysis and genuine understanding of a complicated and fascinating relationship that was undoubtedly essential to medieval civilization.

Those expressing the first, cynical view (with a shrug of the shoulders and upraised hands) assert that of course a gaping chasm separated religious ideals from actual knightly conceptions and behavior. The gap can surely come as no surprise, for these were hard men of war operating in a tough environment, and they were worldly men thinking of dominance, wealth, and courtly pleasures, not of spiritual values, not even of divine retribution for sin. Enthusiastic violence and a relaxed view of sexuality could scarcely be eliminated from their lives. Abstract religious ideals in general, this view might conclude, seldom change behavior in any historical period, at least not when their enactment would prove inconvenient to those socially dominant. Never in the least troubled by abstract thought, the medieval arms bearers simply and impatiently brushed aside homilies and warnings from carping clerics and tiresome intellectual reformers and got on with it. Religious or reforming ideals could only have touched them in the most superficial manner, and religion could only mean unwelcome constraints on behavior as usual (Figures 10 and 11).

To the contrary, this chapter will argue that the knights needed and knew they needed religious ideals. In significant ways, the knights were fully cooperative with clerics and were traditionally religious, often enacting the pious and obedient role ascribed to them as sons of Holy Mother Church in the pages of medieval (and much modern) writing. From childhood knights would have learned the omnipresence of sin and its dire consequences and regularly experienced the directive and mediatory role of the clergy, with some representative likely residing in the family household.