Nobility, Faith and Masculinity by Emanuel Buttigieg

Author:Emanuel Buttigieg [Buttigieg, Emanuel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Medieval
ISBN: 9781441102430
Google: DVqd_gb2tmMC
Publisher: A&C Black
Published: 2011-04-21T22:28:38+00:00

Knightly Brawls

Violence is a performative act, involving perpetrators, victims and, at times, witnesses. For the perpetrator, violence has certain practical and symbolic goals, while for the victim and the witness, violence brings disorder; hence, violence has certain culturally – and spatially – determined meanings.7 Hospitaller knights who hailed from the milieu of the European nobility would have been used to an environment pervaded by violence and related codes of honour and combat. Cultural historians have come to see violence in terms of a drama with particular connotations, rather than meaningless acts.8 In this vein, noble violence was not a mindless behavioural pursuit, but a subtly regulated expression of social pre-eminence and manly honour.9 Across Europe and among all social ranks, violence was endemic; for men, in particular, it was an important means through which one’s masculinity was recognized by significant others.10 Violent masculinity was characterized by an element of competitiveness and as the Hospitallers vied among themselves and with others, they appropriated spaces by making them arenas where aggressive manliness could be played out.11 The paradoxical aspect of this male drive for assertion through violence was that it disrupted and threatened the patriarchal arrangements of society that were meant to guarantee male prerogatives in the first place.12 It is clear that the rank and file of the Order, including aspiring adolescent pages and novices, habitually carried weapons that were used in fights and duels. The list of violent incidents involving Hospitallers is extensive: the drawing of weapons during meetings, knocking out of teeth, stabbings, insults and rapes.13 Many Hospitaller pastimes also involved an element of violence: in December 1611, a number of French knights placed a wager – the prize being a pair of silk stockings – on whether one of them would be able to shoot a dog that had been immobilized against a tree. One knight fired at the dog, hit it, but failed to wound it. The reason for this extraordinary occurrence witnessed by many Hospitallers was considered to be that the Knight La Fretè had used Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim’s De occulta philosophia libri tres (c. 1533) to cast a spell over the dog, making it immune to bullet shots.14

The daily companionship of the young was with other adolescents, with whom one competed for the favour of high-status adults.15 Violence and fighting were an integral – though not condoned – aspect of the modes of masculine expression within knighthood. Knightly brawls were generally underlined by questions of honour and challenges to one’s reputation. In such conflicts, perceptions about national identity, rank and gender intertwined. These undertones characterized the regular conflicts between the Hospitallers and the officers and servants of the Inquisitor and the Bishop. Speeches or actions directed against these amounted to 19 per cent of the accusations brought against Hospitallers at the Inquisition Tribunal; along with heresy this was the highest figure (Table 3.2). In 1586, an officer of the Inquisition, Jo Pasquale de Franchi, stated how while he was spending the night with

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