A knight there was, and he a worthy man,
Who, from the moment that he first began
To ride about the world, loved chivalry,
Truth, honour, freedom and all courtesy.
Full worthy was he in his liege-lord’s war,
And therein had he ridden (none more far)
As well in Christendom as heathenesse,
And honoured everywhere for worthiness.—Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
APRIL was the month in which Chaucer had his pilgrims set out for Canterbury, among whom he placed the knight partially described above. Of all the pilgrims, only three are really virtuous — this Knight, the Franklin, and his brother the Parson — showing that each of the three estates (nobility, commons, and churchmen) were indeed capable of producing such in ways proper to each — but that such virtue was rare. April 23 being the feast of St. George, it is only fitting that we look again at the knighthood and chivalry of which both the Saint and the literary character were offered as fine examples.
Dom Gueranger very fittingly opens his consideration of the feast of St. George thusly: “Clad in his bright coat of mail, mounted on his war steed, and spearing the dragon with his lance, George, the intrepid champion of our Risen Jesus, comes to gladden us today with his feast.” He ends his account with a prayer to the great warrior of God: “Thou, O George, art the glorious type of a Christian soldier. While serving under an earthly monarch, thou didst not forget thy duty to the King of heaven. Thou didst shed thy blood for the faith of Christ; and he, in return, appointed the protector of Christian armies. Be their defender in battle, and bless them with victory that fight in a just cause. Protect them under the shadow of your standard; cover them with your shield; make them the terror of their enemies. Our Lord is the God of Hosts; and he frequently uses war as the instrument of his designs, both of justice and mercy. They alone win true victory who have heaven on their side; and such soldiers, when on the battlefield, seem to the world to be doing the work of man, whereas it is the work of God they are furthering. Hence they are more generous, because more religious, than other men. The sacrifices they have to make, and the dangers they have to face, teach them unselfishness. What wonder, then, that soldiers have given so many martyrs to the Church!”
Now, in truth, the religion of the Knights and Crusaders, and the Vendeens, Carlists, Papal Zouaves, and so many others who emulated them in later times down to the present was active. Leon Gautier comments in his Chivalry: “The faith of these rude warriors, that faith, which was so precise, had nothing namby-pamby in it: nothing dilettante or effeminate. We have not to do with the little sugarplums of certain contemporary devotion — but with a good and frank wild-honey. It is a grosser but a loyal Catholicism. One is not astonished to find that these knights were rigorously logical. They knew too much to stand upon the sterile heights of theory: they knew that they ought to practise their faith. ‘Listen to my song,’ said one of our latter-day poets to his auditors. ‘You will learn how to suffer here below to accomplish the law of God; that law which all honest men obey. ‘Essamplir la loi Dieu,’ It is all contained in that.” At a time when the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre are no longer dubbed with the sword and the Knights of Columbus are forbidden by bishops to draw theirs in churches, this kind of masculine Faith is a little too much for current ecclesiastical authorities.
Yet in truth it is really demanded of all of us. Dom Gueranger’s prayer continues: “But there is another warfare, in which we Christians are all enlisted, and of which Paul speaks, when he says: Labor as a good soldier of Christ; for no man is crowned, save he that striveth lawfully. That we have thus to strive and fight during our life, the same Apostle assures us in these words: Take to you the armour of God, that ye may be able to resist in the evil day, and to stand in all things perfect. Stand, therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of justice, and your feed shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace. In all things taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye may be able to extinguish all the fiery darts of the most wicked one. And take to you the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. We, then, are soldiers, as thou wast, O holy martyr! Before ascending into heaven, our divine leader wishes to review his troops; do thou present us to him. He has loaded us with honors, notwithstanding our past disloyalties; we must, henceforth, prove ourselves worthy of our position. In the Paschal Communion which we have received, we have a pledge of victory; how can we ever be so base as to allow ourselves to be conquered! Watch over us, O holy warrior! Let your prayers and examples encourage us to fight against the dragon of hell. He dreads the armor we wear; for it is Jesus himself who prepared it for us, and tempered it in his own precious Blood; May we, like thee, present it to him whole and entire, when he calls us to our eternal rest!”
In a word, what the Knight or the Catholic Soldier is expected to do on the battlefield, we are called upon to do interiorly. The dragon whom St. George fought — although there are some who argue that it might well have been an actual beast of some sort — is often seen as a symbol of the personal sin against which as a Saint and Martyr St. George fought successfully. Whereas the external battlefield occasionally brings worldly renown, the internal one only brings the occasional sweetness of a clear conscience. Nevertheless, it requires as much dedication, and the stakes are higher: as with Earthly defeats, Earthly victories pass. But Spiritual ones contribute to the final effort at the moment of death — which is why we constantly pray for the help of the Blessed Virgin at that perilous time — she is “terrible as an army in battle array,” and from Our Lady of the Armies, the demons flee in terror.
As with the Knights and their later brothers-in-arms, we should cultivate devotion to the Passion, the Blessed Sacrament, the Precious Blood, the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts, and the Kingship of Christ and Queenship of Mary, as well as St. Michael. But in addition, we should take this very April 23 to begin a devotion to St. George. Dom Gueranger concludes his prayer with the following passage: “There was a time when the whole Christian world loved and honored your memory with enthusiastic joy: but now, alas! This devotion has grown cold, and your feast passes unnoticed by thousands. O holy martyr! avenge this ingratitude by imitating thy divine King, who made his sun to rise upon both good and bad; take pity on this world, perverted as it is by false doctrines, and tormented at this very time by the most terrible scourges. Have compassion on your dear England, who has been seduced by the dragon of hell, and by him made the instrument for effecting his plots against the Lord and his Christ. Take up your spear as old; give the monster battle, and emancipate the isle of Saints from his slavish yoke. Heaven and earth join in this great prayer! In the name of our Risen Jesus, aid thine own and devoted people to a glorious resurrection!”
Oddly enough, Wikipedia’s article on the topic is a wonderful introduction to devotion to St. George; so too is Fisheaters’ page on the topic. It is a good day to pray for all the countries, provinces, and cities who have taken him as their patron, as well as Catholic soldiers — especially Cavalrymen and Tankers, as well as all of the Military Dioceses around the World. We should also pray for the members of the remaining orders of Knighthood — Malta, the Holy Sepulchre, the Teutonic Order, and the many others, that in their various ways they live up to the ideal of Chivalry. We should also pray for all of the persecuted Christians around the globe, who seemingly have few if any defenders to-day. Nor ought we to forget the Boy Scouts, however far so many of their organisations in different places have drifted from their original moorings.
As with Chaucer’s pilgrims, we all inhabit a mixed world made up of Saints and sinners. As with his knight, let us invoke St. George, St. Michael, and the Blessed Virgin to aid us in all our combats, internal and external. As Chivalry commanded, let us do our best to protect the poor, the weak, and the vulnerable in any way God allows us to do so. For the strength we need in this quest, let us repair to the Holy Grail, offered for us at each Mass.
