The Michaelmas Sword and the Christian Knight
A peculiar Anglican tradition I recently learned about is the tradition of carrying a sword at the head of the procession during the Feast of Holy Michael and All Angels, which we commonly call Michaelmas. This might seem a bit aggressive to many, and I suspect that’s why it is no longer a widespread practice.
At first, I was a bit put off by this imagery as well. Yet the more I have thought about it, the more I understand it. The culture I grew up in is very suspicious of militaristic or martial imagery in public settings. And yet, part of the function of the Church tradition across all times and places is to take us out of our cultural particulars and remind us of universal truths, including the ideal for manhood embodied in the person of Jesus Christ.
Sponsored
Knights in the Christian Imagination
Any journey into the Arthurian legend, such as Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, reveals how crucial the Gospel and Christian narrative were to the medieval archetype of the knight. Many other cultures have had armored cavalry, but only a ragtag team of knights could search for the Holy Grail, into which Christ’s blood was directly shed from the Cross, and which symbolizes the enormous power, presence, and reverence the Christian tradition has consistently shown to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.
Similar to how Christian clergy have historically worn specific vestments to symbolize their role as messengers of Christ, based on biblical imagery, the Christian knight’s attire, rooted in real military needs, has profoundly influenced Western (specifically Christian European) consciousness as a symbol of heroism and valor.
A simple Google search for an illustration of St. Paul’s call to don the armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-18) reveals that most if not all pop Bible illustrations will use a form of armor frozen vaguely in the medieval period which is neither what St. Paul was envisioning (such armor had not yet been invented) nor the type of armor that is most contemporary to the reader today (likely some form of kevlar or camo worn by 21st century soldiers). Why is this? What role does the knight play in the Western Christian imagination?
The Warrior Archetype
Most societies, regardless of time or place, have a socially specific version of the warrior archetype. A knight, or a samurai, or a legionary, or a Persian immortal, an Indian Kshatriya, whatever it might be. Some of these archetypes share a number of traits and values, such as honor, bravery, strength, and perseverance. These are the kind of things that attract young boys (and even the shadow of boyhood that lives on in all men) to venerate these archetypes. Boys like to think of themselves as strong, brave, and heroic.
However, our modern world is increasingly skeptical of genuine heroism among warriors. Most warriors are not Lancelots, or Galahads, or Luke Skywalkers. Instead, they are foot soldiers in cynical power struggles puppeteered by faceless power structures. Many boys grow into men and go to war expecting to feel like a hero, only to return from war with a horrible feeling of bitterness. War is not pretty (most warriors know that going in) and often lacks the conventions of heroic storytelling that can vindicate (or appear to vindicate) intense suffering and trauma. Many of the wars Americans have fought in since the Second World War have left a horrible, bitter taste in many of our mouths.
Not Peace, but the Sword
What was all of that darkness and violence really for? What was really gained from all of that bloodshed? Many Christians throughout our history have claimed total pacifism. All of that violence can’t possibly be the will of God. Our Blessed Lord even said so clearly: “All who draw the sword will die by the sword” (Matthew 26:52).
However, on the other hand, we can also see from history that a total pacifism (as assumed by the eventual Allies in World War II in the 1930s) can often lead to more violence. Jesus’s other famous line about swords was that he did not come to bring peace, but a sword. How can we reconcile these two passages as Christians? Can Christians rehabilitate the universal archetype of the warrior in a Christian manner, or must we reject it?
The Christian Warrior Knight
I think we can find our answer in the archetype of the medieval knight. War in the Middle Ages, often ultimately pointless, was extremely common in Christendom. Kings, Princes, Dukes, Archbishoprics, and even the Pope of Rome all wielded large armies in an attempt to settle all kinds of territorial disputes, both real and entirely imagined. Crucial to these armies were mounted professionals, often drawn directly from the noble and wealthy classes themselves, who could afford the steep costs of maintaining a horse (or, more often, a number of horses), arming themselves and their steeds, and caring for the immense amount of equipment.
Many of these knights saw themselves as part of the tradition of warrior saints, such as St. Michael, as virtuous warriors on God’s side, especially during the fateful Crusades. For every knight, a small entourage of squires and other servants often followed, helping the knight to get in and out of his armor, and to upkeep and manage his horses and weaponry. The massive expense of employing knights, compared to simpler common soldiers, was justified by their effectiveness. One massive cavalry charge could totally transform the nature of a medieval battle and overcome perilous odds.
Defeating the Dragon
But a knight was more to their society than just an armored living battering ram. Few of us think of how odd it is that in the modern United Kingdom, people like Paul McCartney or Ian McKellen (not particularly warrior-like figures) are actually knights. However, the British Monarchy has given them these titles in a second sense that is less tied to the strictly martial history of the archetype.
Inspired by St. Michael and St. George (whose eponymous Cross is on the ACNA’s official logo), Christendom has often venerated figures who could rise up to evil and defeat dark and demonic challenges that threatened and endangered innocent communities. The knight’s classic rival in our mythology is not the helpless pikemen that were often their victims in history, but instead is the dragon. In Western culture, the myth of the dragon finds its roots in the biblical serpent beasts, such as Leviathan, with their ultimate typological origin in the serpent of the garden, and Satan, whom Revelation depicts as a dragon.
Michael in Revelation and Jude
St. George infamously slew a dragon. The story of St. George, regardless of its historical accuracy, also reflects the deeper biblical motif of St. Michael’s battle with Satan. In Revelation, we see St. Michael’s battle with the dragon, and this image has filled the imagination of Christians for centuries, representing the power of righteousness over evil.
Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven.
Revelation 12:7-8
In the Epistle of Jude, we discover that St. Michael fought with Satan over the body of Moses. Jude gives him the title “Archangel” in reference to the herald of the Resurrection referenced in 1 Thessalonians. Michael is a warrior, no doubt about it. He is the commander of God’s armies and capable of defeating Satan. But Jude also tells us that Michael, in his battle with Satan over Moses’s body, was careful “not to pronounce blasphemous judgment, but said ‘The Lord rebuke you.’” (Jude 9).
The archangel Michael is a servant of God, not of himself. He is mighty and powerful, not to his own ends, but to the ends of God. He is not himself the author of justice, but an arm of God’s perfect judgment.
War, Violence, and Human Justice
War and violence on Earth are the product of the human ego. It issues forth when man makes himself the pronouncer of judgment. The warmakers busy themselves with practical objectives and make vain judgments of worthiness and heroics. The Roman legions conquered the world to spread ‘civilization’ and empire. Without exception, they thought they were expanding the boundaries of justice to the ends of the earth against vile barbarism. They fought for Roman order and the Emperor’s justice. They fought—in summary—for the laws of man, pronouncing blasphemous judgment.
The truly Christian warrior does not do this. In the rest of Jude’s Epistle, he insists that we contend with the evils within the Church with reason and compassion. By no means does he avoid flowery language about the immensity of the evil within the Church and the world, invoking the image of Sodom and Gomorrah. He even reminds us that the coming of the first Jesus (the Greek name for Joshua) was followed by the destruction of unbelievers. But all evil leads ultimately to its own destruction:
But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.
Jude 10
Like the Archangel Michael, we can’t decide what is or isn’t worthy of destruction—the root of all justice is God’s pronouncements. The pre-Christian concept of power was characterized by choice and authority, and it can turn power into an idol, leading many to the false worship of warriors. But, as in all things, God has made strength, bravery, and power for good, and has a good use in a proper context.
Jesus as the Perfect Example
We see, in the ultimate example of masculinity and power, the King above all Kings, Jesus Christ, a selfless sacrifice for the weak and the vulnerable. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:12-13). A Christian warrior has strength and bravery, not so that he might pronounce his own judgments, but so that he might put himself in the way of evil, and sacrifice himself for the least of us.
This model of the warrior lent itself well to the medieval knight. The knight, in comparison to most of the soldiers of the time, was almost superhuman. One knight could be worth dozens of foot soldiers. But the ideal knight, rather than being an agent of his own ambition, was a loyal servant sworn to a noble king. In practice, the knight played itself out as a pale reflection of the ideal, but the ideal persisted in literature and romance.
The Ideal of the Knight
The stories of King Arthur’s knights were baked in these ideas of loyalty and piety and strength and honor and chastity and honesty. Lancelot was driven by lust to betray his king. Gawain struggles to strike a balance between pride and honor. Galahad, the central figure in the grail story, is in many ways the fulfillment of the knightly archetype. He was born out of wedlock, to Lancelot and Elaine of Corbenic, because Elaine tricked Lancelot into thinking she was Queen Guinevere, Lancelot’s best friend, the King’s wife. Despite his sinful origins, Galahad grows into a pure and merciful warrior, unmatched in both prowess and piety, as well as compassion.
At the end of Galahad’s knightly journey to recover the grail, he doesn’t become an earthly ruler or conqueror. However, instead, he witnesses the glory of Heaven. He chooses to ascend immediately to heaven, rather than live a long life full of earthly glory as a revered and successful hero. In many ways, they represent the Christian’s battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil. This is a fight that we all must wage.
The ACNA Needs More Knights
Many young men in our modern world feel more lost than they have ever before. They are looking desperately for something deeply rooted and meaningful, but also manly (a term which evades dogmatic definition). Today, there is a profound need in our culture for the Church to speak into the hearts of men and provide them with a positive and biblical image of masculinity, rooted in Jesus Christ.
We can look to the many biblical examples of masculinity, such as Joshua, David, Jonathan, Sampson, and St. Michael, as well as catholic examples from the Church’s tradition, like St. George, to establish a broad framework and then embody that in a tangible, culturally coherent archetype.
This is the significance of the liturgical oddity that is the processional sword. It represents St. Michael’s righteous sword, which is the sword in the service of his Master. Just as we process the cross every Sunday, suggesting to every parishioner who bows before it, ‘Take this up—bear your own cross,’ on one day a year, we might also process a sword, suggesting to everyone who views it not to give up the fight.
Image: Digital collage by Jacob Davis featuring photography by iKomputer from Getty Images, and Samuel Borges Photography, courtesy of Canva.
Martin Luther and the Christian Life
Luther’s concern didn’t remain in the ivory tower of abstract theology. Indeed, in many ways, Luther’s aim was a robust recovery of the Christian life.
COVID–19 Targets Single Christians
Note: As the prevalence of shelter-at-home orders and complete lockdowns increases, some solutions suggested in this article may become increasingly unwise. Everyone is accepting some level of self-imposed loneliness today so that those we love can have more life tomorrow. Even if some feel they are bearing more of that burden than others, they can…
