Like the Middle English Charlemagne tradition, the immensely popular romance of Guy of Warwick (hereafter Guy) served as a vehicle for the expression of crusade-related concerns and critiques. But while the Charlemagne romances are mainly interested in the communal politics and providential dilemmas of crusading, Guy tackles questions of motivation and intentionality. Thus, whereas the Charlemagne texts elucidate emotions as responses or appraisals with collective and political implications, Guy explores the notion of emotion as personal, private motivation. In this chapter, I read Guy against the fourteenth-century development of an ideology of “chivalric crusading,” predicated on the values of knight-errantry, courtly love, and social advancement. Many contemporaries viewed this ideology as unproblematic. For others, however, it was a source of profound unease. I consider the significance of this debate in late medieval crusade culture, ranging over biographical, chronicle, and didactic evidence, but focusing in particular on the romance of Guy. As a substantial piece of narrative literature, Guy intervenes in this debate by probing and inviting reflection on the practical and experiential implications of fighting for worldly and devout motives.

Guy, like the Otuel romances, adapts an earlier Anglo-Norman source, in this case Gui de Warewic, composed circa 1205.¹ The romance’s elemental plot, structured around the conversion of its protagonist from glory-seeking knight to miles Christi, is modeled on a foundational image of the crusading movement, and would thus have already appealed to the crusading sensibilities of earlier generations. Having successfully dedicated his youth to becoming the most renowned of knights – a condition stipulated by the woman he loves, Felice, for her consent to wed him – Guy/Gui is struck by an epiphany that reveals the sins of his way of life and the need for immediate atonement. He determines to do penance by becoming a pilgrim and participating in further martial ventures, but anonymously and for God’s sake. This “conversion” motif features in Urban II’s speech at Clermont at the inception of the First Crusade as rendered by Fulcher of Chartres, according to whom the pope compared the “new knight,” who devoutly took the cross out of love for God and his Eastern Christian brothers, with the “old knight,” who followed his own ambitions.² Bernard of Clairvaux famously took up the theme in his De laude novae militae, which stressed the required disposition or affection of heart (affectum cordis) for holy warfare, defined through the love of God (caritate Dei), in contrast to the sinful thirst for vainglory (frustra gloriaris), which leads to homicide.³ From the outset and over the course of centuries, crusaders were encouraged to conceive of themselves as penitent soldiers of Christ who expressed their love for him through martial service.⁴

Despite its origins in the early 1200s, Guy reached its heyday in the following century. The romance’s fourteenth-century vogue is not only indicated by an increase in manuscript production and dissemination, both in Anglo-Norman and Middle English versions, but also by an appropriation of the eponymous hero in chronicles and didactic texts, and as a visual image in manuscript illuminations and carvings on misericords.⁵ Guy’s acute relevance to contemporary crusade culture goes a long way in explaining this spurt in popularity. The protagonist’s rebirth as a miles Christi in renunciation of earthly knighthood spoke to the tensions of a culture torn between acceptance of an increasingly widespread form of crusading motivated by the rewards of honor and chivalric prestige, and a desire to return to former, “purer” values. This debate came into the purview of romance through the novel appropriation, by authors of propaganda, poetry, and chivalric biographies and handbooks, of the conventions of knight-errantry and love-service to frame and promote crusading activity. Works such as Guillaume de Machaut’s La prise d’Alixandre and the anonymous Livre des fais of Jean le Maingre, Marshal Boucicaut, drew on the repertory of Arthurian romance, depicting crusade expeditions as ventures that knights undertook not only for the sake of honor and renown, but also to win the favors of women.⁶ This appeal to the amorous ethics of romance emerged out of authors’ desires to associate their protagonists with the heroes of the Arthurian world, who were spurred by love to attain glorified chivalric heights. Love thus functioned as an ideological buttress for the secular aspirations of knights, a mainspring for their competitive drive to surpass their peers in honor, reputation, and social standing.

Yet the absorption of crusading within this fundamentally individualistic, worldly value system was bound to be controversial. Indeed, concerns with the moral predicaments of Christians engaged in “God’s wars” for worldly love and fame permeate contemporary sources. Treatises for the recovery of the Holy Land composed at the beginning of the fourteenth century stressed the importance of the crusaders’ pure intentions and abandonment of personal ambitions.⁷ For authors such as Philippe de Mézières and John Gower, the notion of crusading for the love of a woman, inextricably linked to self-advancement, represented the height of vainglorious chivalric endeavor.⁸ The antidote to this type of “fole amour” (vain love) is the “vraye amour” (true love) that unites humans to God, the foundational premise for Mézière’s Anglo-French crusading society, the Order of the Passion of Jesus Christ, the main purpose of which was to reconquer the Holy Land.⁹ This atmosphere of chivalric reform is given equally important testimony by the devotional treatises of the English crusader-knights Henry of Grosmont, who fought in religious wars in Iberia, North Africa, and the Baltic,¹⁰ and John Clanvowe, who took part in the Barbary Crusade of 1390.¹¹ Both men devised their works as confessional exercises, animated by an urgent desire for atonement and true self-realization in God’s service.¹² During a period when perceptions of the decline of chivalry were at the forefront of political thought, the sins of Christendom’s knighthood were repeatedly configured as misdirected love, rectifiable only through the regenerative power of Christ’s suffering and love. This tendency evolved, in part, out of the growing influence of pastoral teachings such as William Peraldus’s Summa de vitiis and Thomas Aquinas’s De malo, which related “affectio virtutis” (virtuous affect) to “amore ordinato” (ordered love) and “affectio peccati” (sinful affect) to “inordinato amore” (disordered love).¹³

This chapter considers Guy’s rise in currency in the post-1291 era against the emergence and crystallization of these conflicting crusade ideologies, which acquired central importance in literature and political thought. Despite Guy’s exploitation of the ideals of amour and armes to grapple with contemporary chivalric ethics, and the crucial role of crusading in elucidating the narrative’s moral tensions, little scholarly attention has been paid to the romance’s engagement with love and crusading as such; and the historical writings, practices, and ideals that informed the text’s adaptation and dissemination have been entirely overlooked.¹⁴ To address this gap in scholarship, I examine a series of developments in post-1291 crusade culture that invested Guy with unprecedented relevance: the geographical expansion of crusading, and how it was subsumed into larger structures of international careerist pursuit; the use of love-service to describe, promote, or criticize real-life crusading practices; and the growing importance, in late medieval chivalric biographies and manuals, of a form of homosocial friendship or love, inherently bound up with individual worth and reputation.¹⁵ I then explore how Guy’s rhetoric of love – both heterosexual and homosocial – solicits reflection on the practical challenges and ideological shortcomings of a value system that reconciled wars fought on behalf of God with the pursuit of glory; and how this rhetoric illuminates the desired temporal manifestations of an unwavering devotion to Christ.

As is the case with the romances considered in Chapters 1 and 2, Guy was freely adapted in the post-1291 period in such a way as to engage with the prevailing preoccupations of its time. But rather than reconfigure the dynamics of interreligious conflict by enhancing problematic Christian behaviors (as in The Sultan of Babylon and the Otuel romances), the Middle English Auchinleck Guy (c. 1330) heightens the early thirteenth-century Gui’s critique of the protagonist’s worldly ethos through a prescriptive reworking of his postconfessional, God-serving life.¹⁶ While many critics have distinguished the Auchinleck Guy from its Anglo-Norman counterparts in terms of its emphasis on Englishness, I instead document the adaptor’s pervasive interest in and elaboration on the spiritual, emotional, and practical implications of the hero’s conversion.¹⁷ Previous scholarship has remained skeptical of Guy/Gui’s sincerity as a martial pilgrim, viewing his piety as a narrative ploy to extend his adventures, an attribute of secular heroism, or merely a morally enhancing motif of insular romance.¹⁸ These conclusions rest on the belief that very little separates his acts and decisions as a worldly knight and a miles Christi. I argue, however, that this distinction occurs in the realm of friendship: its nature, motivations, and modalities of expression. In exploring the practical manifestations of the protagonist’s worldly and devout motives, the romance constructs a discourse – informed by theoretical literature and further developed in the Auchinleck manuscript – opposing self-promoting friendship and charitable love, the biblical corollary for love of God. If the success of Guy’s love-driven ambitions relies on the “ennobling” friendship/love, praise, and worship of chivalric peers and social superiors,¹⁹ his quest for divine love translates Christian spirituality into chivalric practice through martial acts of “brotherly” caritas.

The Topography of English Military Careers

Guy’s chivalric career in the first half of the romance consists of tournaments and secular conflicts in various European countries, followed by a crusade expedition to Constantinople and more battles in Europe before a triumphant return to England, where he kills a dragon on behalf of King Athelstan. His martial pilgrimage is then structured around three single combats: in the Holy Land against the Muslim giant Amoraunt as part of a contractual agreement to ensure safe passage to all Christian travelers; in Germany against the steward Berard in defense of his sworn brother Tirri; and finally in England against the African giant Colebrond, warrior of the Danish pagan invaders. Scholarly reluctance to consider Guy’s exploration of knightly ethics in relation to the crusading movement can to some extent be explained by the narrative’s inscription of religious warfare into a wider spectrum of diversified military pursuits.²⁰ Yet this framework of knight-errantry is precisely what would have made Guy’s crusading experience relevant and relatable to a fourteenth-century English audience. Timothy Guard, building on the work of Christopher Tyerman and Maurice Keen, has mapped out the topography of late medieval English crusading in close connection to knightly involvement in other secular battlegrounds.²¹ Crusading not only expanded its geographical horizons after 1291, but also witnessed increased professionalization and became bound up with the other military duties of the fighting classes. The records of the Scrope v. Grosvenor case are particularly illuminating in this regard, providing us with a wealth of chivalric biographical information spanning circa 1330 to the late fourteenth century.²² The depositions given by the several hundred witnesses of the two claimants illustrate the remarkable range of contemporary English military careers. The veteran knight Maurice de Bruyn, for instance, claims participation in campaigns in Scotland, France, Gascony, Brittany, and Normandy, alongside crusade expeditions to Spain, the eastern Mediterranean, and Prussia.²³ Lower on the social ladder, the unknighted soldier Nicholas Sabraham combined service in several theaters of the Anglo-French war with a diverse crusading record: in Alexandria, “in Prussia, in Hungary, at Constantinople, at the Bras de St Jorge [Gallipoli], and at Messembria [Nessebar in Bulgaria].”²⁴ De Bruyn’s and Sabraham’s experiences are corroborated by numerous other cases across the gentry classes and the nobility. This intertwinement of engagement in royal and religious wars was typical in a period when crusading activity hinged on the ebb and flow of the Hundred Years War.²⁵

Similar chivalric trajectories are attested for the Beauchamp earls of Warwick, noteworthy for our purposes because they are known to have shaped their familial identity through association with the romance of Guy.²⁶ Thomas Beauchamp, who went as far as naming his own sons Guy and Reinbrun (Guy’s son in the romance), gained a fierce reputation for martial prowess in Scotland and France, becoming one of Edward III’s most distinguished companion in arms. After the peace of Brétigny, Thomas arranged to join the Alexandrian crusade of 1364 along with a large part of his military household and an entourage of English knights, but when Peter of Cyprus’s forces were delayed, he withdrew and decided to engage in crusade alongside the Teutonic knights in Prussia.²⁷ His grandson Richard Beauchamp, who is likely to have commissioned the French Prose Guy as part of his literary and material efforts to foster connections with the romance,²⁸ also perpetuated the familial crusading tradition alongside service in national wars. From 1408 to 1410, Richard traveled to the Holy Land, where reports of his shared bloodline with the legendary romance figure are said to have prompted admiration from the vizier to the sultan.²⁹ He then returned to England via “Russy Lettowe Poleyn and Spruse Westvale,” according to the Warwick pageant, in emulation of his grandfather: “And in this Jurney Erle Richard gate hym greet worship at many turnamentes and other faites of werre.”³⁰ Richard thus merges pilgrimage, tournaments, and other unspecified chivalric deeds under the banner of itinerant knightly pursuits. These examples, among many others available, offer insight into the geographical breadth of the secular and religious war experiences against which Guy would have been read.

For Love, Praise, and Glory

Like the paradigmatic heroes of Arthurian romance, Lancelot and Tristan, Guy attains exceptional chivalric heights under the auspices of a woman.³¹ The beginning of the romance casts its protagonist in a state of love-longing, manifested somatically by extreme spells of “hete” and “chele,” and culminating in frequent swooning – a condition, as underscored by the fruitless efforts of the court physician, that only Felice has the power to cure.³² But as in most romances of innamoramento, the social barriers separating Guy, a steward’s son of unproven merit, from Felice, the daughter of his liege lord (the Earl of Warwick), are sharply drawn.³³ Felice’s other suitors, the “best” and “richest” earls and dukes “in þis world,” establish the standards to which Guy must rise to find amorous fulfilment. Her requirement that he be held “best doinde / In armes þat animan mai finde, / þat vnder heuen þi beter no be” (1157–60) awakens Guy to the possibilities of worldly self-realization afforded by the knightly profession: “God to gode hauen me sende! / Time it is þat ich fond / To winne priis in vncouþe lond” (1190–92). The parting words addressed to his father establish his social ambitions: “mirþe & ayse” in old age, Guy asserts, are the natural payoff for a career dedicated to garnering “pris” and “los” “ouer þe se” in youth (1219–32). The hero’s all-prevailing concern with glory and fame is repeatedly affirmed, first on the European tournament scene, and then in the lead-up to the first two major conflicts in which he participates: the battle of Segyn, Duke of Louvain, against the German emperor Reiner; and the defense of Emperor Hernis of Constantinople against the Muslim forces of an unnamed sultan.³⁴ His worldly success, viewed by many (himself included) as a sign of divine favor,³⁵ is enabled and validated by the “loue,” “frendshipe,” “worþschipe,” and “preyse” of dukes, kings, and emperors. The romance mobilizes an economy of love-as-praise. Winning friends and praise are commensurate in the narration of his chivalric feats in Rouen, Spain, Germany, and Lombardy; Duke Reiner, “þat him loued and held dere,” showers him with “worþschipe,” “manschipe,” and “praise” upon his arrival in Saxony; similarly, the Byzantine emperor Hernis asserts his love, friendship, and affection for Guy, buttressed by promises to do him “miche honour.”³⁶ Opportunities for social advancement afforded by the hero’s prowess are substantial. His upward trajectory culminates in a crusade expedition that sees him offered Hernis’s daughter in marriage, half of the emperor’s lands, and the imperial title after the emperor’s death. Guy ultimately declines the reward and returns home to claim Felice as his wife, and the associated noble title – “þan was sir Gij of gret renoun / & holden lord of mani a toun” (20:1–2).

The romance’s inscription of religious warfare within a framework of love-service – performed by acquiring social recognition in the form of homosocial love, praise, and fame – would have powerfully resonated with perceptions of the place and appeal of crusading in fourteenth-century chivalric society. With the increasing elusiveness of the movement’s traditional material incentives (such as spoils of war and fiefdoms in the Levant), the rewards of honor and renown became commensurately more important. The enduring popularity of crusading was integral to the full flowering of chivalry.³⁷ The cult of chivalry, most fully elaborated after the fall of Acre, was institutionalized through the creation of a multitude of secular orders, many of which combined devotion to crusading with an indebtedness to romance models.³⁸ The Order of the Garter in England, imbued with the allures of the Arthurian world and a strong culture of chivalric fame, boasted a significant number of crusaders.³⁹ Crusade propaganda capitalized on the stimulus of secular chivalric ideals. The Teutonic Order in particular fostered an image of the Baltic crusades that appealed to the self-aggrandizing aspirations of Christian soldiers. This effort crystallized in the institution of a “table of honor,” reserved for the most valorous warriors.⁴⁰ In a competitive environment where knights and squires strove for distinction, the special prestige of crusading was of considerable motivational influence.

The honor and recognition afforded by fighting non-Christians could also translate into opportunities for social and political advancement. Crusading, as noted by Christopher Tyerman, “acted as a means of entry to the ranks of the knightly and respectable for parvenus, a ticket of admission into the secular social elite.”⁴¹ The illegitimate son of John of Gaunt, John Beaufort, acquired a reputation for chivalric valor by crusading in North Africa in 1390, Prussia in 1391 and 1394, and perhaps against the Ottomans at Nicopolis in 1396. Though he was already an eminent member of the nobility, his career prospered remarkably in these years: he was put on the royal payroll as a king’s knight in 1392 and was made earl of Somerset and knight of the Garter in 1397. Lower-ranking soldiers also stood to gain from fighting on Christendom’s frontiers. Henry Scrope of Masham’s participation in the Barbary Crusade of 1390, for example, saw him knighted and promptly employed in Richard II’s service upon his return.⁴² Similar patterns are discernible at the county level. Guard describes the composition of Thomas Beauchamp’s 1364 crusading retinue as “a mixture of fee’d retainers, territorial clients and the cadets of lesser noble families seeking means for advancement and a stable income.”⁴³ The notion that crusading could take the form of a rite of passage is epitomized by the tradition in the Prussian reysen of dubbing squires who had proven their merit.⁴⁴ As summed up by Froissart, crusading in “Prusce,” “Constantinople,” or “Jhérusalem” was of primary importance for “tout chevalier et escuier qui se désirent à avancier” (every knight and squire who wishes to advance himself).⁴⁵

A work that encapsulates the culture of chivalric careerism that Guy would have evoked is the anonymous Livre des fais of Jean le Maingre, Marshal Boucicaut. The Livre des fais is an exemplar of the heroic biography, an increasingly popular genre that, in its very conception, attests to knights’ growing concern with their reputations and the posterity of their achievements. Boucicaut’s career consists of a dizzying array of tournaments; Hundred Years War campaigns in Normandy, Flanders, and Toulouse; and battles against Cyprus, Venice, Milan (and the list goes on). But several interspersed crusade expeditions proved his greatest claim to fame: in the Baltic, the Iberian peninsula, the eastern Mediterranean, and the Balkans.⁴⁶ The work is replete with references to the importance for knights of vaillance, fais de guerre, ardeur d’armes, and poursuite chevalereuse, driven by desires to accroistre leur pris and seek avancement.⁴⁷ While situated within a framework of divine service, Boucicaut’s motivations, the Livre des fais suggests, transcend the secular or religious nature of the conflicts in which he partakes: his primary concern is “pour tous jours son honneur accroistre en voyagent et voyant de toutes choses” (to continually increase his honor by travelling and seeing many things).⁴⁸ He dedicates his “belle jeunece” (youthful years) to crusading because its inherent virtue endows it with unequaled prestige.

Underlying the system of chivalric values epitomized by Boucicaut’s biography is an ideology of love inspired by Lancelot, Tristan, and “plusieurs autres que Amours fist bons et a renommee attaindre” (many others that love made valorous and famous).⁴⁹ Amours and poursuites d’arme are portrayed as inextricable. The grounds on which love permits men to reach vaillance are expounded at length in two chapters, the second of which concludes by crediting Boucicaut’s chivalric career to the incentive provided by women.⁵⁰ The narrative does not elaborate on any amorous relationship at this stage, but instead focuses on the social function of love as a practical buttress for chivalry.⁵¹ Love stimulates knights to fight courageously and achieve renown, which results in an enhancement of their standing in society. The connection between love and social improvement is underscored when, upon being named marshal of France at the age of twenty-five, Boucicaut is compared to the chevalereux Rommains of old, whom love had driven to achieve maintes choses honorables: “Et pour ce les Rommains ne laissoient point, pour la grant jeunece d’iceulx, a les mettres es grans offices de la chevalerie, si comme les faire ducs, connestables et chevetains de tres grans ost” (And for this, the Romans did not let the great youth of these men interfere with their appointment to the high offices of chivalry, such as making them dukes, constables, and commanders of great armies).⁵² The author advocates a model in which social rank is no longer solely a prerogative of birth, but can also be achieved through chivalric merit and reputation, spurred from a young age by the emotion of love.

Inherently bound up with this economy of heterosexual love is one of homosocial friendship. If the love of women prompts and rewards knightly endeavor, it is, as in Guy, through the love and favors of high-ranking men that chivalric fame is measured and social advancement achieved. By outshining others in valor, Boucicaut incurs the bonne amour and doulce amistié of some of the most influential aristocrats of France, resulting in various honors, appointments, and promotions.⁵³ The love of powerful men stands as a gauge of respect and honor, a token of high favor that comes with social benefits. This form of love underlies Boucicaut’s participation in the Nicopolis Crusade of 1396. King Sigismund of Hungary couches his appeal of assistance to Philip of Artois against the political expansionism of the Ottomans in terms of honneur, amistié, and amour. Pitched as an opportunity for French knights to “accroistre leurs honneurs et leur vaillances” (increase their honor and valiance), this expedition appeals to Boucicaut for three particular reasons: the prestige of fighting Muslims, the honor and affection granted him by Sigismund during an earlier visit to Hungary, and his grant amour for Philip of Artois.⁵⁴ Crusading thus provides opportunities for meritorious martial achievements, while contributing to structures of mutually exalting love that ensure knights’ social recognition and advancement in society.

The chivalric values embodied by Boucicaut were theorized by Geoffroi de Charny, also a celebrated professional soldier and crusader. His Livre de chevalerie situates the practical edification of the knights of his time within the tradition of other vernacular manuals of chivalry while assimilating the amorous ethics of Arthurian romance.⁵⁵ Like Boucicaut’s biographer, Charny insists on the “utility” of love, invoking the example of naïve men who would have remained oblivious to their chivalric potential were it not for the fruitful exhortations of women. Charny envisages love-service as beneficial to both sexes, inspiring men to “aler oultre ce que par avant n’en avoient eu nulle volenté” (reach beyond any of their earlier ambitions), while also prompting them to protect and defend the honor of women. The strength and durability of love is in turn dictated by the levels of worldly success to which the knight aspired: a woman’s love for him should be commensurate with the love and esteem bestowed upon him by his peers.⁵⁶ Through honorable feats of arms, knights elicit the love, admiration, and praise of other men, in turn gaining “cognoissance, avansement d’estat, profit, richesce et acroissement de tout bien” (recognition, rise in status, profit, riches and increase in all benefits).⁵⁷

Thus, given the social prestige of crusading and the perceived role of love in stimulating chivalric achievement, it comes as no surprise to find the two increasingly connected in fourteenth-century historical and literary sources. The prevalence of this link is further attested by the works of Guillaume de Machaut and by German chronicles and poetry of the Prussian reysen. Machaut’s Le dit dou Lyon (1342) extols the merits of men who fight for love’s sake in such places as Cyprus, Alexandria, and Prussia,⁵⁸ while his later verse biography of Peter of Cyprus, La prise d’Alixandre, prefaces the account of the Alexandrian Crusade of 1365 with a fictional introduction of mythological inheritance whereby Venus instructs the protagonist in the affairs of love and Mars in the art of war.⁵⁹ The moral and chivalric education underpinning Peter’s career as the most illustrious crusader of his generation commences at the age of nine, when “tuit si penser tuit si desir / furent en faire le plaisir / de dames et de damoiselles” (all his thoughts, all his desires / Were directed toward what would afford pleasure / To ladies and young women).⁶⁰ As in the Livre des fais, there is no apparent tension between the protagonist’s earthly aspirations and his service to God. Peter affirms the pursuit of honor, glory, and love within a crusading framework, but is also depicted as a fervent miles Christi.⁶¹ Religious ideals are similarly refracted through the romance conventions of love in Nicolaus of Jeroschin’s Krônike von Prûzinlant, a history of the Teutonic Order’s Baltic activities written circa 1341, and Peter Suchenwirt’s Von Herzog Albrechts Ritterschaft, which tells of Duke Albert III of Austria’s journey to Lithuania in 1377 “to achieve knighthood.” In its reworking of Peter of Duisburg’s Cronica terre Prussie, the Krônike not only refigures Baltic crusading as a project in defense of the Virgin Mary, cast as a “zarte mait” (tender maiden), but also punctuates its report with damsels in distress.⁶² Even more heroic in tone, Suchenwirt’s Von Herzog presents crusaders racing joyfully into combat wearing lavish love tokens.⁶³ These authors capitalize on the allure of an enterprise in which spiritual salvation, the favors of women, and worldly praise could be concurrently obtained.

It is thus against the efflorescence of these crusading ideals, colored by amatory precepts and their associated worldly ethic, that Guy’s earthly vita would have been understood. Love-service had entered the realm of reality to support a chivalric philosophy of devotion to the values of honor, glory, and reputation. Crusading’s prestige gave ample grounds for its appropriation as the main constituent of this ethos. Proponents of this ethos strove to blend religious and worldly motivations in a harmonious way, fostering an image of crusading as both temporally and spiritually rewarding. The appeal of crusading was broadened by the fact that an honorable record could facilitate upward mobility, or strengthen the case for a promotion well suited to one’s rank. For the authors of heroic biographies and manuals of chivalry such as the Livre des fais and the Livre de chevalerie, social ambitions were realized by earning the friendship and affection of fellow knights and social superiors. The love of these men was to be gained, nurtured, and upheld through meritorious martial achievements, for it was seen as determining one’s worth and status in society. The emerging discourse of love – both romantic and political – is thus inherently instrumental. Guy capitalizes on both types of love in eminently successful ways, yet their inscription within a context of religious warfare proves fundamentally problematic. Worldly love devolves into a code of ethically ambivalent chivalric pursuit profoundly at odds with the Christian precepts of divine and neighborly caritas.

Problematizing Love-Service and Crusading

Guy’s crusading expedition in defense of the Byzantine emperor Hernis subsumes the traditional crusading pattern of aid to Christian “brothers” in the East into a framework of careerist pursuit. At the opening of this crusading episode, Guy announces his desire “to help þemperor of his wo” (2850) and rallies his men to battle “for godes loue” (2930). But fighting for the faith is also the apotheosis of his quest for worldly “worþschipe” (2856), and his service rests upon temporal compensation: “Ȝif þou miȝt me of hem wreke,” pledges Hernis, “Mine feyr douhter þou schalt habbe, / & half mi lond, wiþ-outen gabbe” (2885–88). Religious and secular incentives are fused, setting the scene for an exploration of the tensions at play: were wars founded upon the doctrine of caritas, comprising both love of God and fellow Christians, reconcilable with the selfish ambitions that crusading so often satisfied? If the instrumental garnering of homosocial love, praise, and worship is a stipulation of Guy’s amorous quest, it becomes, in the course of this pivotal episode, so all-consuming that it not only effectively trumps his love for Felice, but also his devotion to the Christian faith. The cycle of always higher social and material expectations in which the protagonist finds himself engulfed is only broken when he explicitly dissociates love – heterosexual and homosocial – from self-advancement, in a prefiguration of the central confessional scene, in which “true,” marital love is in turn surpassed in the hierarchy of human pursuits by love of God. Through its demythologizing critique of chivalric love-service, the romance invites its audience to reflect on the practical and ideological shortcomings of an increasingly popular crusade ethos combining service to God with the pursuit of glory. It shows that social and material aspirations are self-perpetuating and can never be fully satisfied, that they are constantly at risk of prevailing over all else (especially one’s devotion to God), and that given the transient nature of earthly recompense, they are pointless.

Although perceived by many as a favorable spur for martial prowess, fully compatible with knights’ duties to God, the Arthurian dictates of love had long been viewed by others as inimical to the chivalric vocation and generative of sinful behavior. This negative evaluation originated in the distinction, fundamental to theological thinking in the high and later Middle Ages, between spiritual love (amor spiritualis), leading to virtue, and carnal love (amor carnalis), through which humans are tempted to vice.⁶⁴ Erotic love’s potential to corrupt was in fact inscribed into one of the most extensive codifications of the emotion in the medieval period, Andreas Capellanus’s De amore (c. 1186–90). In structuring his work, Capellanus appears to have invoked the principle of duplex sententia: books 1 and 2 glorify sexual love, whereas book 3 condemns it as a sin that disrupts social harmony, leads to devastating wars and pointless deaths, and deprives humans of God’s grace.⁶⁵ The Arthurian tradition itself had challenged the inherently individualistic worldly value system promoted in its use of the terms of love. In the Vulgate cycle’s penultimate romance, La queste del Saint Graal (c. 1215–30), erotic love is denounced as an impediment to moral judgment and social concord. Lancelot’s obsession with garnering Guinevere’s favor at all costs makes him act for the wrong reasons – worldly worship – which impairs his ability to prioritize just over unjust wars.⁶⁶ Within the formative traditions on the subject, there had already emerged a counterdiscourse rejecting the benefits of heterosexual love, underpinned by a belief in the emotion’s tendency to detract from chivalry’s core values.

Various didactic and theological writings testify to the currency of such critiques during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Honorat Bovet’s Arbre des batailles equates fighting for women with the sin of vainglory.⁶⁷ Similarly, The Book of the Knight of the Tower accuses knights of misleadingly ascribing the “honour” and “worshyppe” accrued during their “vyages” to their paramours, when in fact “they done it only for to enhaunce them self / and for to drawe vnto them the grace and vayne glory of the world.”⁶⁸ An equally disenchanted perception of knights’ exploitation of amorous motives is espoused by Christine de Pizan’s Livre des trois vertus: when men engage in chivalric endeavors under the pretense of love, she contends, “ilz servent eulx mesmes, car l’onneur et le preu leur en demeure et non mie a la dame” (they are serving only themselves, for the honor and the benefit remain with them and not with the lady). Love’s appropriation for self-interested purposes is compounded by the emotion’s inherently transient nature: even when love is true and faithful, Pizan asserts, it invariably subsides.⁶⁹ Other authors went even further and refuted the very premise of love’s connection to chivalric achievement. Thomas Bradwardine’s “Victory Sermon” after the Battle of Crécy in 1346, for instance, denounced the notion of love’s positive influence on military valor and success as erroneous on the grounds that victory and defeat were God’s sole prerogative.⁷⁰ Roughly a century later, Ghillebert de Lannoy’s Enseignements paternels altogether debunked the link between amorousness and prowess, asserting that women were in fact detrimental to knights’ worldly careers, causing them to lose “honneur, terres et seignouries” (honor, lands, and power).⁷¹ This countercurrent of opposing voices, while further testifying to love’s entrenchment in contemporary chivalric mores, raised serious questions about its moral and political perils. Among the most recurrent counterarguments were love’s damaging effects on moral judgment and sociopolitical bonds; its transitory nature, making it unworthy of serious investment; its appropriation as a front for vainglorious chivalric pursuit; and its irrelevance to or prejudicial impact on military outcomes, which God alone controlled.

Guy’s superficial adherence to love’s inspirational power belies a profound skepticism of the interdependence of amour and armes, which suffuses the narrative and provides an underlying rationale for the protagonist’s conversion to God’s service. Echoing a complaint frequently voiced in didactic writings, Guy constructs a discourse of opposition between heterosexual love and harmonious chivalric relationships, the significance of which is enhanced (as we will see in the next section) by the narrative’s rhetoric of charitable friendship as a means of reclaiming divine favor. The most explicit manifestation of this tension, interpolated in the Anglo-Norman Gui tradition at the end of the thirteenth century and foregrounded in the Auchinleck manuscript, occurs in the aftermath of an ambush in Lombardy, which costs the eponymous hero the lives of two of his most cherished friends: “For þi loue, Felice, the feir may, / þe flour of kniȝtes is sleyn þis day” (1559–60). Guy continues by asserting the prevalence of love’s chivalric casualties: “For þe last no worþ y nouȝt / þat wimen han to grounde y-brouȝt” (1563–64).⁷² The Auchinleck version further cements the connection between romantic love and unwarranted wars and/or deaths in the narration of the battle of Sir Tirri of Gormoise against Duke Loher. Tirri’s attempted elopement with Loher’s daughter Oisel, like Guy’s service to Felice, results in the loss of his closest companions: “Alle þai slouȝ mine feren, / þat swiþe gode kniȝtes weren” (4631–32).⁷³ Love’s socially disruptive power is perhaps most sharply raised in the acts of betrayal and breaches of agreement perpetrated by the romance’s villains. Love of Hernis’s daughter, promised to Guy, prompts Steward Morgadour to plot the protagonist’s demise, in violation of his emperor’s trust and the Christian faith (3161–390); Duke Otes of Pavia’s treacherous actions against Guy and Tirri of Gormoise originate in an amorous conflict with the latter over Oisel (5635–732); and the Muslim warrior Amoraunt’s failure to uphold a contractual agreement during his duel with Guy is imputed to his amorous enthusiasm (122:2–10). Thus threaded throughout the romance, in the lead-up to and aftermath of the conversion episode, we witness the articulation of a subtext of evaluation (implemented through primary and secondary characters) of love’s damaging effects on homosocial relationships and chivalric morals, in consonance with contemporary didactic literature on the subject.

Within a context of crusade, Guy’s interrogation of love comes to bear on the intrinsic questions of the chivalric vocation: its underlying motives and expected rewards. Love-service, conceived as a shorthand for knights’ “loue of þe world,” is invoked to comment on the inconstancies and vanity of earthly chivalric pursuits. Reminiscent of Chrétien de Troyes’s Yvain, the eponymous hero becomes so enthralled by the possibilities of self-enhancement afforded by chivalry that he temporarily forgets the end goal of Felice’s love. By having Guy repeatedly and enthusiastically consent to marry Emperor Hernis’s daughter Clarice – as part of a package deal of lands, power, and social status in compensation for his military assistance against a Muslim army – the romance offers a dual critique of worldly motivations: not only are they exposed as transient and susceptible to corruption and change, but they are also shown to cultivate a cycle of escalating expectations of social and material recompense. For Herhaud, cast as the guarantor of Guy’s worldly success, love-service is in fact divorced from the emotion of love, serving only to enhance knights’ reputation and status.⁷⁴ The natural culmination of his protégé’s quest – which, as he is fully aware, was undertaken to win over Felice – is to marry Clarice and thus acquire unrivaled rank and power: “In þe world ne worþ man of so gret miȝt, / No of so gret pouer, y pliȝt” (4263–64). Herhaud’s surprise at Guy’s reasserted feelings for Felice – “þat þou hir louedest wist y nouȝt” (4275) – affirms the subordination of amorousness to worldly ambitions within a system that commodifies women as one among other forms of chivalric “pris.” Guy rejects this ideology at the end of the crusading episode by disconnecting love from self-advancement, proclaiming his preference for Felice over “alle oþer þat were o liue / Wiþ alle þe gode men miȝt him ȝiue” (4203–4). This realization prompts him to abandon his pursuit of “pris” and “los,” in anticipation of his subsequent epiphany and rebirth as a miles Christi.

Equally central to the romance’s evaluation of worldly motivated crusading, effected through its critique of love-service, is the notion that temporal rewards, unlike spiritual ones, are uncertain and ephemeral. On his way back to England, Guy encounters Tirri, whose love-spurred expedition to the frontiers of Christendom finds Oisel in the meantime promised to Duke Otus of Pavia. It is only by waging a destructive war against Otus and Duke Loher that Tirri is able to rectify the damages incurred during his absence and claim the object of his desire. The futility of worldly inspired pursuits and the transitoriness of worldly rewards are of course thrown into sharpest relief by the protagonist’s conversion in an episode that brings these critical strands to didactic fruition. Despite Felice’s expectations of undying love, Guy’s reputation, social status, and newly found marital bliss can in no way compete with the joys of heaven granted to those who fight for divine rather than worldly approval – a juxtaposition that the Auchinleck version, deviating from its Anglo-Norman counterparts, couches in terms of love: ⁷⁵

If amorous passion spurs the pursuit of fame and self-enhancement, God’s love and the associated promise of eternal salvation demand atonement through the espousal of a lifestyle of humility and self-denial: “For his loue ichil now wende / Barfot to mi liues ende, / Mine sinnes for to bete” (26:4–6). Guy’s asceticism, devotion to Christ’s Passion, and piety, though integral to the early thirteenth-century Gui, were intensified in the course of the romance’s translation in the Auchinleck manuscript. Expanding on his or her sources, the adaptor elucidates the implications of Guy’s rebirth as a soldier of Christ: he walks “barfot,” “in pouer wede,” and begs for his food; his rejection of material wealth is more emphatic; he repeatedly expresses “wo,” “care,” and “sorrow” at the magnitude of his earlier transgressions; his devotion to the Passion of Christ and reliance on divine help are enforced; and the crusading language of penitential pilgrimage, “for godes loue” and in remission of sin, is more pervasively employed in the narration of his travels and combats in the Holy Land and Europe.⁷⁶ It appears quite clearly that the fourteenth-century refiguration of Guy’s God-serving life infuses the previously produced text with a powerfully ascetic thrust, in marked contrast to the worldly value system of the protagonist’s youth.⁷⁷

At a time when the sins of Christian knights dominated moral discourse on the crusades, the polemic surrounding crusaders’ motivations played out through a rebuke of the movement’s exploitation of the ethics of amours and armes. One of the most outspoken objectors to the waning pious sensibility of which love-service was perceived as symptomatic was Gower, whose principal works in French, English, and Latin broach the issue with characteristic verve. His Mirour de l’Omme assigns contemporary enthusiasm for crusading in “Espruce” and “Tartarie” to three reasons, the first two of which “ne valont une alie” (are not worth a sorb-apple): “pour loos” (for praise); “pour m’amye, / Dont puiss avoir sa druerie” (for my beloved, so I may have her affection); and for God, who should be served “Devant tous autres” (before all others).⁷⁸ Like Guy, Gower calls upon love-service to denounce the unpropitious nature of worldly motivated pursuits and the transitory nature of earthly rewards:

The uncertainty of worldly recompense is reaffirmed in Confessio Amantis through a rhetorical question reminiscent of Tirri’s plight – “What scholde I winne over the se, / If I mi ladi loste at hom?”⁸⁰ – while in Vox Clamantis, Gower again exposes the futility of such endeavors, even when (as is the case with Guy) they yield desired results: love and worldly fame, he declares, pass away in vain “diuine laudis merito vacuus” (without the reward of divine commendation). Love, according to the author, is both endemic to the chivalric stratum and profoundly detrimental to its morality, engendering inconstant behavior, breaches of judgment, irrationality, and folly. In sum, love “vere probitatis miliciam extinguit” (veritably extinguishes all chivalrous virtue). Knights are chastised for espousing this ethos, as are women for perpetuating it.⁸¹ Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess echoes Gower’s Vox Clamantis by admonishing women who send men to “Walakye,” “Prusyse,” “Tartarye,” “Alysaundre,” and “Turkye” for promoting “half word” and “contenaunce”; good women, Lady White asserts, avoid such “knakkes smale.”⁸²

Gower and Chaucer were not alone in deploring love’s morally detrimental hold on fourteenth-century chivalric society. The urge toward chivalric spiritual revival that underpinned such critiques was championed most vehemently by Philippe de Mézières; and the influence of such ideals on contemporary chivalric introspective thought is witnessed by the penitential treatise of Henry of Grosmont, duke of Lancaster (and John of Gaunt’s father-in-law), and a veteran of crusades in Spain, North Africa, and the Baltic. Mézières’s order was, in its very conception, the most tangible embodiment of contemporary aspirations to renew knights’ devotion to Christ.⁸³ Its original purpose, as described by Christopher Tyerman, was “to inspire repentance and piety through the cult of the Passion which would then lead to assistance for Christians in the East, the recovery of the Holy Land, and the strengthening of the church.”⁸⁴ In his Songe du vieil pelerin, Mézières not only accuses English knights of being “enyvrez d’oultrecuidance et animez en la doctrine des belles bourdes, contenues et manifestees en vaillance mondaine de Gauvain et de Lancelot” (drunk with audacity and spurred by lying ideologies manifested in the worldly valor of Gawain and Lancelot), but defines his “sainte de chevalerie” (holy chivalry) in opposition to “ceulx qui veulent devenir preux comment qu’il aille, et font leurs moyens d’amer par amours pour parvenir a vaillance” (those who want to become brave by any means, and go through courtly love to reach valor).⁸⁵ The theme takes on a distinctly pastoral dimension in his Sustance de la chevalerie de la Passion de Jhesu Crist, which laments the prevalence of wars waged for the sin of lechery: knights, he asserts, all too often “destruient l’un l’autre pour acomplir leurs folz delis charnelz” (destroy one another in order to consummate their foolish carnal desires). Thus “pour les pechies dessusdis noz chevaliers d’occident, hardis entre lez dames, helas, ont perdu l’amour et charite de Dieu et de la foy” (for the above-mentioned sins, our western knights, brave among women, alas, have lost the love and charity of God and the Christian faith).⁸⁶ Grosmont’s Livre de seyntz medicines offers an experiential corroboration of Mézières’s trenchant views. Confessing to a lifelong martial career driven by lecherous passion, the duke of Lancaster contrasts his unwillingness to go “nuz pieez en pelerynage” (barefoot on pilgrimage) to earn God’s love to the lengths to which he went to gain “le pris, le gree et l’amour” (the esteem, the favor, and the love) of foolish men and women.⁸⁷ Love-service thus stands within these writings as a rival moral code to Christianity, symptomatic of the moral degeneracy of the “chevalerie mondaine du jourduy” (worldly chivalry of the day), whose obsession with self-enhancement thrives off the vain love and accolades of chivalric peers and women.⁸⁸

Correspondingly, Guy’s postconfessional contemptus mundi, markedly enforced in the Auchinleck version, aligns with Grosmont’s and Mézières’s belief that moral reform was to be enacted through humility and divestment from self, founded on what Andrea Tarnowski has called “knighthood’s fundamental connection to suffering and love – that of the Saviour for man, and, as the author hoped, that of man for his Saviour.”⁸⁹ But whereas Grosmont, writing for confessional purposes, focuses predominantly on his own moral failures, Mézières, whose intentions are socially prescriptive, elaborates at length on the behavioral remedies to the sins of his day.⁹⁰ As in Guy, Mézières considered the outward appearance and material values of his order of primary importance in reflecting the desired inner disposition of piety and dedication to Christ. Members were thus required to renounce “lez grans honneurs, richesses et delis du monde occidental” (the honors, wealth, and pleasures of the western world); to wear nothing more extravagant than “une robe honneste de drap de simple couleur” (a fitting fabric mantle of simple color), in the image of Christ; to abstain from eating copiously on Fridays, as an act of penitence “par compassion de la Passion de Nostre Segneur” (out of compassion for the Passion of our Lord); and to be “bien regulee, pour avancier le tamps de la sainte conqueste et recommencier saintement et vaillaument la bataille de Dieu” (well regulated, in order to advance the time of the holy conquest and piously and valiantly relaunch God’s war).⁹¹ Successful crusading, in the author’s view, hinged upon an ambitious program of individual moral reform, enforced by ascetic discipline and the rejection of all material overindulgence, in emulation of Christ.

Yet while proponents of this ascetic crusade ethos saw humble awareness and the shunning of material values as antidotes to chivalric vainglory, they followed Christian theology in positing brotherly caritas as the foremost way of performing divine love on earth. If the love of fellow knights and social superiors serves as a benchmark for Guy’s reputation prior to his renunciation of worldly glory, it is thereafter through charitable martial assistance, devoid of self-interest, that the protagonist enacts penance for his earlier sins.

Selfish and Selfless Friendship

As shown by the work of Albrecht Classen and Klaus Oschema, among others, medieval Christian understandings of selfish and charitable friendship relied on ancient philosophy.⁹² Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics ascribed human mutual affection to three motivations: utility, pleasure, and “good” in abstract terms. His threefold division, predicated on the distinction between transitorily based friendships and “true” philia, was in turn appropriated by Cicero, whose immensely influential De amicitia opened the way for Christian redefinitions of a secular concept according to the demands of a new religion.⁹³ New Testament writers and Old Testament translators narrowed the vocabulary of unselfish love to the terms agape and its Latin equivalent caritas, which was intimately bound up with the paradigm of “brotherhood,” a central guideline of Christian doctrine.⁹⁴ The notion that God was the source, inspiration, and goal of true friendship was formulated by Augustine and further elaborated by Aelred of Rielvaux, who argued for an understanding of benevolent, charitable friendship as a worldly manifestation of piety and a route to the knowledge of God.⁹⁵ Friendship’s spiritually exalting ability was reaffirmed by Thomas Aquinas, as was the distinction between caritas, performed by doing good to others, and a form of tainted love, rooted in personal benefit or pleasure.⁹⁶

These theories were instrumental in establishing the devotional framework for the crusades. From the movement’s inception, Christ’s Passion was posited as irrefutable proof of God’s love, requiring charitable reciprocation through aid to fellow Christians in the East. Pope Innocent III, proclaiming the Fifth Crusade, grounded this responsibility in scripture: “Nam et quomodo secundum preceptum divinum diligit proximum suum sicut se ipsum, qui scit fratres suos, fide ac nomine christianos, apud perfidos Sarracenos …?” (For how can a man be said to love his neighbor as himself, in obedience to God’s command, when, knowing that his brothers, who are Christians in faith and in name, are held in the hands of the perfidious Saracens …?).⁹⁷ Eudes of Châteauroux, drawing on Augustine, presented brotherly charity as a natural extension of divine love, implying a rejection of worldly honors for the salvation of one’s soul: “Sic ergo hec conversio fit per amorem. Et ex quo convertit se quis ad Dominum per amorem, mundum et ea que in mundo sunt derelinquit, ut non amet ea” (This conversion thus happens through love. And when someone converts to the Lord through love, he renounces the world and everything that is of the world, so that he may not love them).⁹⁸ The temporal sacrifices inherent in crusading were repeatedly set against the much higher spiritual rewards conferred upon the charitable, devout, and penitent.⁹⁹ In its purest form, brotherly caritas, as theorized by propagandists, was to be devoid of any worldly considerations, and served as a means of obtaining God’s love.

But in practice the spiritual benefits of crusading were often supplemented by temporal ones. Sermons stressed the importance of self-denial, fraternal charity, and devotion to God, and yet the possibilities of political and economic advancement came to be recognized and accepted from an early stage. Abbot Martin of Pairis, preaching the Fourth Crusade, offers a strikingly direct assertion of the good fortune likely to reward pious crusaders: “Nunc videte, fratres, quanta sit in hac peregrinatione securitas, in qua & de regno celorum promissio certa est, & de temporali prosperitate spes amplior” (See now, brethren, what assurance there is in this pilgrimage, which holds out both a sure promise of the kingdom of heaven and a greater hope of temporal prosperity).¹⁰⁰ Such perceptions hinged on the belief that divine favor could be manifested not only in transcendent but also in worldly terms. Crucially, however, this acceptance depended on the crusaders’ motivations. Apologists admonished those whose primary motives were worldly, rather than pious. The Clermont decree of 1095 restricted the remission of sins to those who took the cross “pro sola devotione, non pro honoris vel pecunie adeptione” (for devotion alone, not for the acquisition of honor and money). Before the Third Crusade, Gregory VIII enjoined participants from going to the Holy Land “ad lucrum vel ad gloriam temporalem” (for wealth or worldly glory).¹⁰¹ Thus temporal honors could come as a divine reward – a bonus to the much more important prize of heavenly salvation – but only if the crusaders’ motivations were charitable and devout. The key criteria in this subtle yet critical distinction were right intent and purity of motive, the legal stipulations of penance and just war.¹⁰²

Guy engages with the fraught issue of crusaders’ mixed motivations by inviting scrutiny of the eponymous hero’s relationship with the Byzantine emperor Hernis, joining a group of noncrusading Middle English romances such as Amis and Amiloun, Athelston, and the alliterative Morte Arthure in which friendship, as shown by Christine Chism, is “a site of questioning.”¹⁰³ As suggested above, Emperor Hernis’s love for Guy is constructed as a gauge of the protagonist’s worldly status and achievements: within this framework, the narrative makes clear, love is the currency by which reputation is measured and social success made possible. Yet Guy’s desire to garner the love and praise of other men is also shown to be his greatest moral weakness. Love’s potential to exalt, and thus flatter, is manipulated by the emperor’s steward Morgadour to plot Guy’s demise. Morgadour lures the protagonist into a trap by appealing to the language of friendship (“mi frende dere, / Y þe loue in gode manere” (3163–64)) and offering him “Castels,” “mani feir tour,” and “Riche cites” (3170–71) – in other words, by exploiting the very social and material ambitions shoring up his initial participation in crusade. Tricked into believing the emperor has betrayed him, Guy laments the affront and wrathfully revokes his pledge of martial assistance to the Eastern Christians, resolving no less than to defect to the Muslim enemy:¹⁰⁴

Guy’s misdirected priorities are thrown into relief: the promise of “gret worþschipe” inherent in the emperor’s “loue” takes precedence over his religious identity, to the extent that he is ready not only to abandon his fellow crusaders but to join the Muslim forces in defeating them. Confronted by Hernis, Guy somewhat ambiguously denies then confirms the emperor’s (justified) assumption that his friendship is a commodity that can be bought, declaring that he was never a “traitour” yet confessing to a prevailing desire to fight for someone “þat mi seruise ȝeld me wold” (3356 and 3368). Realizing that Guy’s decision to change sides was prompted by a perceived breach of love, implying a setback to his rise in chivalric eminence, Hernis responds in consequence: he proclaims his unrivaled love for the protagonist (“& topon al oþer y loue þe” [3346]), swears to love only those who treat him well, takes his “dere frende” into his arms, and reaffirms Guy’s rights over “alle þat min is” (3372–82). The protagonist’s attempt to capitalize on crusading to further his own personal interests thus culminates in him not only defaulting on his amorous vow to Felice, temporarily revoked by the very ambitions she served to rouse, but nearly deserting the Christian cause, blinded by his obsession with the “pris” and “los” to be gained through the love and worship of high-ranking men.

After Guy renounces his quest for worldly glory, the romance’s economy of self-advancing love gives way to one of charitable friendship, especially pronounced in the Auchinleck manuscript. Taking leave of the Byzantine emperor, Guy encounters Tirri, who poignantly laments Oisel’s abduction and the loss of his comrades to the forces of Duke Otous. While the early thirteenth-century Gui grounds the protagonist’s solicitude in the man’s chivalric identity as “Terri,” “le preux, le vaillant, le hardi,” the Auchinleck version, by contrast, portrays Guy’s response as heartfelt, free of worldly concerns, and elicited by Tirri’s misfortunes: “Wel depe in hert he haþ y-siȝt. / Grete pite he haþ of þat kniȝt: / He knewe Tirri for his frende” (4683–85).¹⁰⁵ A similar elision of worldly considerations characterizes the romance’s rendition of the two men’s oath of sworn brotherhood. Both versions present Guy/Gui taking the initiative in establishing the bond, but the Anglo-Norman text suggests that he is prompted by a return on investment (principally in the symbolic form of gratitude) for the “mult grant honur” conferred upon Tirri by his presence and help, whereas the Middle English romance omits reference to any such expectations. Instead, it introduces Guy’s proposal simply with the statement “Miche loue was bitven hem to” (4904).¹⁰⁶ Particularly noteworthy for an oath premised on the agreement to “no faile oþer while he liues is” (4912) is the degree of worldly disinterest operative in Guy’s conception of the union, the profits of which go almost exclusively to Tirri.¹⁰⁷ While scholars often disagree on the animating motives of such covenanted associations (which were often too diverse for systematic codification), Guy’s altruistic devotion to Tirri, pervaded by a growing spiritual consciousness, aligns with theological understandings of “true” friendship as a fundamentally ethical value in agreement with divine will.¹⁰⁸ The paradigm of fraternal charity is thus already introduced in the lead-up to the protagonist’s epiphany, as a determining catalyst in his journey toward God.

The romance’s rhetoric of brotherly caritas is subsequently borne out in the three battles the protagonist undertakes during his penitential pilgrimage in the Holy Land, Germany, and England. After visiting the holy sites of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, Guy falls upon a grief-stricken crusader named Jonas, whose failed attempt to recover Jerusalem from Muslim forces threatens to cost him his life and those of his fifteen sons – a verdict that can only be reversed through the intervention of a champion willing to duel against the Muslim giant Amoraunt. Guy expresses “rewþe” at the man’s sorrows and anonymously accepts to take on the combat out of “loue” for him.¹⁰⁹ Like his earlier assistance of Hernis, Guy’s one-man crusade in support of Eastern “brothers” is buttressed by a contractual agreement. But rather than resting on the rewards of status, power, and reputation, his intervention bears the promise of freedom to all Christian prisoners in Alexandria and safe passage to Christian pilgrims in the Levant (88:1–9). The protagonist’s sphere of charitable influence thus extends beyond Jonas and his sons to encompass not only a significant group of persecuted Christians in the East, but also the Christian community as a whole through the spiritual benefits afforded by the restored possibilities of pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Fraternal charity and divine love are in fact conflated in the Auchinleck manuscript, when Guy, charged with serving a “feble lord” on account of his humble attire, describes his martial pilgrimage for God using the imagery of feudal friendship: “& þer-fore icham þus y-diȝt, / To cri him merci day & niȝt, / Til we ben frendes same” (85:7–9).¹¹⁰ As is widely documented, couching the charitable framework of crusading in terms of a feudal obligation was one of the most common and presumably effective motifs of crusade propaganda.¹¹¹

The language of penitential pilgrimage is finally maintained during Guy’s adventures in Germany and England, where he single-handedly reestablishes Western peace and harmony through acts of charitable martial assistance. His charitable intentions are underscored in the Middle English text as he instates Tirri to the position of steward to the Western Christian emperor in place of the “prout” villain Berard: “Y no fiȝt for to win no þing, / Noiþer gold no fe, / … Bot for mi felawe y loued so wel” (197:5–8).¹¹² Similarly, when King Athelstan, faced with the invading pagan Danes and their African giant Colbrond, implores Guy to “take þe batayle now on hond, / & saue ous þe riȝt of Inglond, / For seynt Charite,” the protagonist expresses “care” at the great “sorwe & sikeing sare” of the English, and accepts “for god in trinite” (246:10–248:6).¹¹³ The Auchinleck Guy’s concern with the spiritually exalting nature of brotherly love is finally perhaps most evident in the adaptor’s reworking of the protagonist’s funerary arrangements after his death as a solitary hermit. While in both Gui and Guy the hero is provided with a humble burial outside his hermitage, the Middle English romance interpolates a final stanza in which Tirri brings his sworn brother’s body “into his owhen cuntray,” Lorraine, where he builds an abbey in his honor (298:1–12). In death as in life, the devotion shared by the two men is celebrated as an expression of piety and love of God.¹¹⁴

Caritas and Chivalric Piety

Clear evidence that Guy’s martial pilgrimage was understood in the fourteenth century as promoting the virtue of brotherly caritas is provided by contemporary writings that appropriated the romance hero for didactic instruction. The Gesta Romanorum, a collection of stories and anecdotes in Latin compiled in England for pastoral use, presents a much-abridged, free adaptation of Guy’s penitential life, showcasing the importance of crusading and friendship as complementary means of spiritual self-realization. The tale conflates themes of crusading as both vengeance and compassionate love with an elaboration on mental constancy in friendship, where Guido’s self-denying devotion to his companion Tyrius serves to allegorize Christ’s loving sacrifice for humankind.¹¹⁵ The doctrine of caritas also underlies the Speculum Gy de Warewyke, a Middle English didactic treatise based on Alcuin’s Liber de virtutibus et vitiis and framed as a dialogue between the author and Guy, but commonly dismissed by critics as bearing little relation to the romance.¹¹⁶ The opening exhortation for the reader to “loue god ouer alle þing” to “heuene winne” is a generic commonplace, yet the treatise’s repeated emphasis on divine love’s practical application – “If þou louest god ful iwis, / þu [wolt] louen alle his” – is intertextually illuminating.¹¹⁷ This “verray charité” is underpinned by “humilite” and a rejection of “þis worldes blisse” – of the “worldes honour,” and “gret los and pompe and pride.” Guy, who “forsook” the world, serves both as a pupil for moral edification and as an exemplar held up for emulation.¹¹⁸

While the rhetoric of caritas was bound up with the crusading movement from the beginning, Mamlūk reconquests in the Levant and the rise of what I have called “chivalric crusading” invested God’s two “greatest” commandments with renewed urgency. The French poet Rutebeuf’s Lament warns of the impending universal uprising of non-Christians caused by Christian lack of charity.¹¹⁹ Treatises offering advice on how to reconquer the Holy Land proposed ambitious programs of logistical, structural, and strategic improvement, and yet all agreed that these measures would be to no avail lacking God’s support, which could only be secured through the individual efforts of inward moral regeneration of knights. Fidenzio of Padua imputed the fall of Acre to the crusaders’ breaches of caritas, unitas, and fidelitas – qualities that he posits as indispensable for the recovery and subsequent preservation of Christian holy sites in Syria and Palestine.¹²⁰ The resulting agenda of chivalric reform was perhaps most influentially championed by the Spanish writer Ramon Llull, who himself experienced a transformative conversion in 1263, relinquishing the worldly lifestyle of his youth – a period when, according to his biographer, he delighted in composing worthless songs (uanis cantilenis) of foolish love (amore fatuo) – to become one of the staunchest supporters of a purged, Christianized ethic of knighthood.¹²¹ His Book of the Order of Chivalry – narrated by a veteran knight hermit rather like Guy (and literally Guy in Joanot Martorell’s Tirant lo Blanc [c. 1460–64], which conflates Guy and Llull’s Book) – founded its prescribed code of chivalric behavior on “charyte in God / and in [one’s] neyȝbour”: for “charite is a vertu aboue other vertues” which “departeth euery vyce.”¹²² His Book, a work of immense popularity across western Europe, became the crux of his subsequent ambitions to recover the Holy Land, which hinged upon the organizational attributes of sapientia and potestas, and their spiritual sine qua non – caritas.¹²³ Later in the fourteenth century, Mézières’ Order of the Passion mobilized similar spiritual guidelines. To rectify “le monde qui fort va a declin,” his “sainte Chevalerie” was to provide a model of penitential and compassionate unity among themselves and toward the “crestiens d’orient,” which would renew Latin Christendom’s love for “Nostre Segneur Jhesu Crist” and establish peace “entre les crestiens” at home.¹²⁴ Individual chivalric moral regeneration from the ground up was thus viewed as key to both successful crusading in the eastern Mediterranean and peace and harmony in Europe. Mézières’s ideas imbricate with Guy’s premise that individual acts of charitable friendship can effect sociopolitical change for the Christian common good in the West, as in the East.

The practical influence of such notions of charitable friendship and penitential martial pilgrimage as the chosen route to chivalric spiritual fulfilment is reflected in a number of English fourteenth-century knightly trajectories. Most illustrative for our purposes are those of John Ryvere (c. 1313–64) of Gloucestershire, where the story of Guy is known to have circulated, and John Clanvowe (c. 1341–91), one of the so-called Lollard knights and a friend of Chaucer, who was well acquainted with the romance.¹²⁵ Ryvere dedicated his early martial career to serving Edward III, particularly in the Scottish wars, but is reported to have developed an aversion to killing fellow Christians. Hoping, as put by Guard, “to expiate crimes committed during his former soldiering career,” Ryvere received a papal safe conduct and embarked to the Holy Land “in subsidium fidelium” (in aid of the faithful) against the Mamlūks, accompanied only by two long-serving members of his household. He fought in Romania (western Anatolia) before spending several months traveling as a pilgrim and spy in Syria, Egypt, and Jerusalem, where he became a patron of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, an international knightly brotherhood vowed to the rules of poverty, charity, and obedience. In the year of his death, he gained papal permission to become a Dominican friar in London.¹²⁶

Clanvowe’s life also bears broad resemblance to Guy’s, showcasing a mixture of crusading, pilgrimage, and devotion to fellow Christians as the privileged means of translating penitential piety into knightly practice. He served as a soldier for the crown when the spoils of the Anglo-French war were notably rich, and as a courtier under Richard II, but rejected the worldly values of praise, fame, and glory in his devotional tract, The Two Ways, written at the end of his life. Caritas, the key concept in this work, is ascribed a position of unrivaled prominence in the hierarchy of human endeavors: “Alle þoo þat louen so God and here neiȝebour as hem self þei been in the nargh wey þat leedeþ to þe blisse þat euere shalle lasten.”¹²⁷ These words were reportedly composed after the author’s participation in the Barbary Crusade of 1390, an expedition that culminated in the unsuccessful siege of the Tunisian coastal city of Mahdia, and shortly before his death on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem the following year, accompanied by his sworn brother and crusading associate, William Neville.¹²⁸ The Westminster Chronicle couches the two English companions’ quasi-concurrent deaths near Constantinople in terms of fraternal love:

As in Guy, their mutual devotion, rooted in a common love for God, was commemorated in special funerary arrangements. The men were buried in a shared tomb bearing a double epitaph and their impaled arms, symbolizing the strength of their affection.¹³⁰

The brand of chivalric piety purveyed by Guy was in vogue in fourteenth-century England, as attested by pastoral literature, chivalric manuals, penitential treatises, and biographical trajectories. Even the written testaments of contemporaries supply evidence of the purchase held by this form of humble, penitential awareness. In his will, Lewis Clifford (c. 1330–1404) – also a Lollard knight, a friend of Chaucer, a participant in the Barbary Crusade, and, moreover, a member of Mézières’s Order of the Passion – commends his “wretched and sinful soul” to God and instructs that his “stinking carrion” be buried in an unadorned, anonymous grave in the furthest corner of the local churchyard.¹³¹ With these directions, Maurice Keen remarks, Clifford “struck out at the flamboyance that was the outward symptom of chivalry’s vainglory.”¹³² Chaucer himself modeled aspects of his Squire and Knight in The Canterbury Tales on the conflicting chivalric ideologies of his time. The Knight, clothed in humble attire (a travel-stained doublet of simple fustian), is characterized by his love of “chivalrie,” framed as integral to his dedication to “oure faith.” His son, by contrast, is lavishly dressed in the latest fashion (a short gown with long, wide sleeves, embroidered in fresh-cut flowers), and fights primarily “to stonden in his lady grace.”¹³³ The Knight is by no means representative of an outdated ethos – as critics long believed – but is best understood as an exemplar of the increasingly widespread pious sensibility explored in this chapter, which defined itself against an equally important, concurrent movement toward chivalric secularization. Knights’ “loue of þe world,” viewed by many as endemic, was rejected in multifarious ways: through a critique of the ideology of amour and armes; the associated values of praise, fame, and social advancement; the garnering of homosocial love to further one’s own selfish ends; and all forms of material excess. Guy invites its audience to reflect on the conflicting crusading values of the time, exposing the practical dangers and futility of waging religious wars for earthly glory, while suggesting that as an antithetical code of conduct, brotherly caritas held unequaled practical applicability: as Christianity’s prescribed temporal manifestation of love of God, it enabled pious knights to carry out their spiritual mission through virtuous martial action. It is within this nexus of tensions that Guy would have been understood in late medieval England.