There are lots of knights, usually nasty, in B. Sheingorn ed and
trans the Book of Saint Foy (Philadelphia, 1995). They crop up in
accounts of her miracles c.1000-c.1050.
On 18 Feb 00, at 15:39, Patrick Nugent wrote:
In posthumous miracle collections from the eleventh and twelfth centuries,
the miles or knight regularly appears as a particularly nasty character,
but often one who is able to redeem himself. In one text, the miracles of
St. Bercharius, even well-intentioned knights are thieves by nature and
commit theft without knowing it: a knight decides to build a new church and
sends a peasant to collect stones from the forest. The peasant comes upon
a pile of ruins and carries away some choice building stone. Unwittingly,
he is desecrating a church built centuries before by St. Berchar, who of
course punishes him. The text makes it clear, however, that the theft is
the knight's fault, a raptor in spite of his good intentions.
And of course there are feuding knights, knights seeking to plunder church
lands, knights to oppress hapless peasant, and so on.
I'm wondering if anybody has done a study of the image of the knight in
hagiographic literature, especially in posthumous miracles. I'm aware of
Rosenwein's excellent treatment of Gerard of Aurillac as the model and
antitype of the rapacious knight in Odo of Cluny's vita. Have there been
any broader studies? Studies from the Merovingian, Carolingian, or late
medieval periods?
(Of course there's been a great deal of excellent work on the Peace of God,
arguing persuasively that knights weremore or less as nasty as the
hagiographers make them out to be, most recently Thomas Head's piece in
Speculum. But I"m interested in the literary history of this perduring
image.)
One might expand the question to the image of the miles in
non-hagiographic monastic or ecclesiastical literature.
I'd be most grateful for any help anybody can provide.
__________________________________
Patrick J. Nugent
Earlham College
Richmond, Indiana 47374 USA
(765) 983-1413
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