The crusading movement, which combined the Augustinian notion of just war with the medieval ideals of pilgrimage, relic devotion, and knightly penance.

Crusaders and Kings: The Contrast between Richard the Lionheart and Philip Augustus

by Brendan J. McGuire

The familiar modern image of the medieval knight—a creation of the Victorian romantic imagination, frequently appropriated by Hollywood—can be considered to be, at best, a distant and distorted shadow of its medieval literary ancestor, the knight of the chanson de geste. 

 Knightly virtue, in the modern period, is believed to have consisted in raw physical courage, athleticism, good looks, and a swashbuckling demeanor, often combined with the idealization and adoration of women. 

The knights who figured in the chansons de geste, on the other hand, possessed virtues that have no place in modern literature and cinema: profound religious piety, devotion to holy relics, willingness to subordinate worldly interests to celestial ones, and a penchant for grand acts of public penance. 

 This last trait was a peculiarly important one. Ecclesiastical reformers, especially from the tenth century onward, stressed the importance of serious penance to a European warrior class whose members—from petty barons to kings and emperors—always lived by the sword and often died by it.

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